Long Live The Queen 10 : Folly
by Gojirob
Summary: A rogue state has its own Diclonius, and the power once closest to it feels its hand is forced. Kouta faces a challenging new job and a very crowded Maple House. The girls change their sights; Yuka makes a choice. The War Of The Horns begins in earnest.
1. Chapter 1

Folly

by Rob Morris

Chapter One - The Folly Of Grown Men

The door of the flat burst open, letting in a flood of armed soldiers such as had not been seen since a small former restaurant and inn called Maple House had been forcibly entered less than six months ago. These soldiers sought not the supposed enemy of the Human race, but rather a possible traitor to that race.

"Do not move or reach for so much as your hair-brush!"

The target looked like he had seen neither a hair-brush nor a wash-cloth in quite some time. Around him, there were guards covering every exit possible, and chamber-scanning equipment used against drug dealers and kidnappers was also in evidence, in case the suspect had escape tunnels. Dogs trained to sniff for bomb-making materials sniffed the air for possible booby-traps.

"Why would I move? I can live or die, knowing I did all I could to protect the innocent and the true heirs of this planet."

Doctors and other medical personnel were on standby, in case the suspect had ingested poison prior to the raid. They were willing to kill him, and he was willing to die, but in fact they wanted him alive.

"So you're leading these jackbooted thugs? Doesn't surprise me much. It's been a long time, boss."

Doctor Kurama stepped in and took point on the questioning.

"Yes, it has been a long time, Oomori. Longer for you than even for me, and I hadn't thought that possible."

Oomori looked like an emptied shell of a man, more empty by far than when the news of his daughter's mandated euthanizing had struck him across the soul.

"Tell me, Kurama-san-however is Hiromi-Chan doing?"

Kurama's remaining hand balled into a fist and sent his captive sprawling. But Oomori shrugged.

"Too soon? Should I ask instead about Kisaragi-San, Shirakawa-San, or any of the others you've scraped off from your boots? Like my daughter?"

Kurama directed he be seated once more, and the soldiers did just that.

"So this started from revenge for your daughter?"

Oomori laughed.

"No, Kurama-it started from yours. A guard who was dismissed from the institute told me of how you made a deal with Kakuzawa to keep your little girl alive. My sweet little baby and so many others were strangled by your hands-but somehow yours was allowed to live."

Kurama stood firm.

"I'm unimpressed by your blather. In fact I've watched my Mariko die three or four times, and that is no joke. My deal with Kakuzawa was a poorly made one, and I ended up short on all fronts. That I am a hypocrite for what I did is no news to me. But I, Oomori, have news for you."

Before his former assistant before Isobe could retort, Kurama kept on.

"The families whose Diclonius daughters you helped hide from us say you told them of a South Korean monastery where their children would be raised without fear of hate or summary execution."

Oomori still seemed smug and self-satisfied.

"You'll never find it, Kurama. Armies for centuries have battled around it, and never even known it was there. The girls are safe. There, in that place, the children may play."

Kurama surprised his prisoner by smiling.

"So you believe that your partners in all this were activist South Korean monks and nuns?"

Oomori thought he sensed where this was going. He was wrong.

"Is this the part where you tell me that my partners are Moonies or the like? Because I suspected as much-and I just don't care. The girls are safe from those who would harvest them, kill them, or use them as weapons."

Kurama produced a handgun and placed it on the table in front of a stunned Oomori.

"In fact, your partners were your handlers. They weren't religious folk of any stripe - they were North Korean agents. The girls you helped put in their hands have likely been brainwashed since birth to serve the Kims. You have provided a dynasty of madmen with the ultimate biological weapons."

Oomori's next words were in fact quite predictable.

"You're lying. You just want me to cough up their location so you can all feast on lamb meat. Well, screw you, Kurama. Because even I don't know their exact location."

Kurama repeated some of Oomori's own words.

"Armies for centuries have battled around it and never even known it was there. Something your partners told you?"

Oomori felt himself slip, though he couldn't say why.

"Yes. Which again means-you'll never find it."

Kurama shook his head.

"There once was an American TV show which depicted a group of medical officers at a frontline unit for the wounded of the Korean War. There came an episode when an unfortunate infant child came into their custody, a half-Korean, half-American child, who had no good prospects, till their company chaplain suggested a monastery. He said it was a safe place - armies for centuries had battled around it and never even known it was there."

Kurama tapped the gun he had placed on the table.

"You were bamboozled into giving those girls over to spies working for someone almost as bad as Kakuzawa, and tricked using lines from a TV show."

Kurama began to walk away.

"Do the right thing, Oomori, if you have that left in your wannabe crusader skull."

Oomori seized the gun, aimed at Kurama and pulled the trigger.

"I will do the right thing, you hypocritical snake! I will end your-"

Oomori's gun, having no bullets, fired nothing at all. Kurama's real gun did have bullets and ended the tortured life of his one-time assistant.

"Like I told Kisaragi, Shirakawa and Isobe, Oomori-San-I should have been a better boss. My apologies."

Kurama pointed to the room around them as he ordered the soldiers about.

"I don't care if it's the address of a taiyaki and lemonade stand-copy down any names or numbers you find in here. Unrelenting search, gentlemen. As for myself-I must join my daughter at her sister's grave."

As Kurama left, all were forced to wonder when the rogue state would make its move.

The first to find this out would be the ones who had always watched the North Korean regime closer than anybody.

_**CHINA**_

There were days when the Senior Minister For Allied Relations wondered why he had bothered surviving the Cultural Revolution.

_*I should have just yelled out '__**Long Live The Kennedys!'**__ and had done with it.*_

This was turning into all of those days.

"They are demanding what?"

His best aide was a stereotype. He was the overly efficient, political officer wannabe who would gladly remind his superior of things like party and nation loyalty. He survived only because the Minister had nightmares about who would get sent as a replacement.

This was on most days, but not on this day.

"Minister-I-I-checked and rechecked the message-I even had our best translators check it for dialect and other issues."

Both men had advanced degrees in study of the Korean language. That his often-cocky aid bothered to have the work checked was not a good sign. That he was now the stereotype of the unconfident aide who was a shaking wreck was also not good.

"I'll assume you wired back for confirmation? This is the sort of stunt the Americans would pull, after we got their hyped-up spy plane."

"I did, Minister. The only confirmation offered was, and I quote : *You can read, can't you?*"

The North Korean government often worried a lot of people around the world. It would have surprised a lot of those people that the one who was most worried about it was that regime's own best sponsor.

"Hu-help your old Minister in this turbulent moment."

"In any way I can, sir."

The Minister sighed.

"They are demanding-not requesting-that oil, food, and water aid be immediately increased a hundred-fold. They are not even hinting of how this will be remunerated. They have also included broad hints about the health and well-being of Chinese citizens and diplomats living within their auspices. Is this correct?"

The aide was blank-faced, plainly trying to come up with some reason why what obviously was happening was not happening at all. Despite an apprenticeship in the departments in charge of press releases, Hu was not able to even attempt this.

"That is correct, Minister. All of our usual means of confirming this within the DPRK have gone silent, but the conclusion seems inescapable."

The Minister requested a key from his aide, who briefly became flustered again at its mention. The minister used this key to unlock a secret keyboard on his phone, one with speed-dials even a Senior Minister never used unless he was dead certain.

"Hu-I am about to be noticed by the gods above us. You may wish to update your resume."

Five officious secretaries attempted to turn the Minister back over the phone. To each one, he said a certain phrase, this until he reached his contact, a man whose sole job was to alert members of the Central Committee in Beijing that something truly urgent was in the air.

The message was a deadly simple one, one that had been feared since the Russo-Chinese clashes of the last century, when it was unknown which side their 'ally' would take.

"The small dog has become rabid and broken its leash."

When it was clear that the message had been delivered, the Minister ordered lunch for himself and Hu. Their own subordinates stood ready to show the Committee's subordinates the veracity of their concern, when it would be requested.

"What happens now, Minister?"

The Minister let his soup cool while answering.

"I once watched a marvelous work by the American Disney. It was forbidden - sort of - by the central government, but the local censor loved it well, so it got into our town. A frontier family took in a dog who proved to be a loyal and true friend, even saving his boy master from being attacked by rabid raccoons. The dog himself was bit, and was doomed as a result. The father was away, so the mother went to do what had to be done. But her boy seized the gun from her, stating that it must be he who did this, as it was his dog."

Hu was not a sentimental man, but inside him, he almost hoped this story had a sappy Disney ending.

"So what happened?"

The Minister shrugged.

"Old Yeller met the fate of a rabid dog."

Hu excused himself, found his private office, turned on some music, sealed the door, and began to cry. But his tears were not merely for the once-loyal 'dog'. His tears were also shed in the knowledge of the damage a rabid dog could do when cornered.

At the border between the PRC and DPRK, massive bribes to the guards saw a large group of young girls into China. The guards hardly noticed that the girls looked odd, somehow not Asian at all. If anything was noted, it was their large prominent hair ribbons, all tied in the exact same spot on their heads.

_**Japan - Maple House**_

Kouta tried and failed to at last draw a line to his house's extended guest list.

"No! This is the end of it. I can at least stop this much."

The Agent stood at the doorway of a house she had invaded months earlier.

"Anna-chan needs direct protection. North Korean agents could try and kidnap her. They've done so to other Japanese citizens."

Kouta was not budging.

"The North Koreans have their own Diclonius, you say? Then they don't need Anna-chan. She is safe here without you."

Anna Kakuzawa's family name was not known to her hosts, but she was a welcome tenant, and she was encouraged to make her feelings known. She did so now.

"Kouta-San, why are you being so mean? This woman is my friend. She helped save my life, and made me see-my responsibilities in the world."

The Agent smiled at her younger friend, but felt obliged to make things clear.

"Anna-Chan, when Lucy was housed here, I was part of the force that broke in and took her. We weren't gentle about it, and among other things, Kouta-San was shot-by me. I was-I was trying to keep Nousou alive long enough to be interrogated by Saseba."

Anna looked at her friend in surprise, and then again at Kouta.

"Why was Lucy here again?"

Kouta lost some of his look of rage.

"Lucy-Nyu-I thought she was my friend. I think she wanted to be. But I'm not sure she knew what friendship was."

Kouta realized anew that his vengeful, hurt feelings were partly the result of learning who Nyu really was and remembering that horrible night all at once. It was his fervent wish not to hate her, and he held an equal desire to see her legacy on the Earth done with.

"Anna-chan really needs this protection?"

The Agent saw a new side to the young man, to drop his posturing so quickly.

"Arguably, what you said about the enemy not needing her is true. But it would make our government breathe a lot easier if she had such protection."

Kouta nodded.

"You can stay in Anna's room. I-"

"Sorry. Need my own. Anna's room is fortified and alarmed. My presence would set off too many false positives for our people to filter through."

Kouta bristled that Anna's room had been altered without his knowledge or consent. Nozomi, who had sat silently until then, made the breakthrough.

"Kouta-San? She can stay with me. My room is next to Anna-Chan's."

The Agent nodded, glad she didn't have to deal with the thought of being alone.

"I like it. A second set of ears to rouse me, in case something suspicious happens along."

Nozomi stood up, and got in her new roommate's face.

"But-when you hear me gargle at night-and you will-please remember that thugs with chokeholds shouting 'Shut Up!' at the top of their lungs while brandishing automatics is a good way to get people to panic and disobey."

"Hey! I didn't make any of the tactical calls on that strike!"

Nozomi had understood for quite some time that Kouta would never choose her over Yuka. But she resolved to become strong enough to make him at least sometimes wonder about his choice.

"Yet you were there, and Kouta-San was indeed shot."

The Agent removed her glasses and looked Nozomi straight in the eye.

"You and I are going to get along just fine."

The Agent then looked at Kouta.

"Okay if I have a house-guest? It'll relieve your aunt of utility bills as well."

Kouta was feeling like having a long talk with his Auntie about making arrangements behind their backs.

"Sure, why not?"

It was a surrender to reality, but it was a bitter surrender that was about to become a lot more bitter.

"Did-did he agree yet?"

As Arakawa entered, Kouta's blood pressure rose yet again.

"Her? She's the one who told your thugs where to find us."

Arakawa looked at the Agent.

"Did you squeal on me about that?"

Kouta pulled her attention back to him.

"No one squealed but you! You think I didn't see you following me back here that night? I thought you wanted to tell me something else about the Diclonius, but you turned and left. The rest of it I figured out later on."

Arakawa had felt guilty about that from the start, but her defenses were in play, and what remained of her pride at stake.

"Well-you should have never gone straight home-especially if you saw me! You should have tried to lose me-you know how I felt about Lucy and the danger she posed."

"Nyu-Lucy never had a home here."

"Say what you like! But you still lead me right to her!"

The Agent shook her head.

"If you had a secret, and you had suspicions, checking for tails is just common sense."

Anna felt bad for the way Kouta was being ambushed and cornered, but knew well why Arakawa must also have a safe house.

"Kouta-San-I ask you to let her stay here."

"Anna-chan-I acceded to your one friend since you are our guest and tenant. But this other one? She lectured me about the responsibility I bore for Lucy's freedom while working to aid a madman whose plans may yet undo the world."

Anna played a card. Some small part of her abilities had returned, though the literally monstrous part was gone forever. She was actually annoyed not to be a simple girl anymore, and doubly annoyed that it had to be used against a host whose family had made her feel so welcome. But this was needed.

"That madman was my own father. You are right. He was lost in what he believed to be true, and now many will likely die as his plans continue to take hold. Arakawa-San can help undo the harm she and my father caused, and her work is aided by a safe comfortable place to sleep. Also, I do not ask this as your guest and tenant - but as a family member."

Kouta was hesitant. Even before this, he knew Anna had been hurt and was alone in the world. But a line had to be drawn.

"Anna, you are the newest member of our family here. I have to think of the others."

"No-I don't mean the ties you have built here, with Mayu-chan and Nana-Chan and Nozomi-San. I mean that we are family by blood-yourself, me and Yuka-San. Your great-grandmother is also my aunt, a few generations removed. Like me, she was born without the horns my father mistook for a racial difference. Ask your aunt, Emiko-Dono. She knows."

Kouta's mind reeled at this. He suddenly saw a different meeting in a different past, where a young boy with horns showed a young girl she wasn't all that different. He wondered what else could have been different.

_*NO-she had killed already by that point-even if those little wretches brought it on themselves. There was no saving her.*_

"I will relent for family, Anna-chan. But I must know-was the man I knew as Professor Kakuzawa - the man whose job I now have - also our relative?"

"My brother-though I not only forgive Lucy for killing him-I applaud her for it. He was a pig, and it made me feel dirty to know him."

Kouta embraced his little cousin, and just for a moment, imagined she was Kanae.

"Hopefully this makeshift papa and onii-san does a bit better by you."

She smiled.

"He already has. The small happiness you all have here has made me feel better than I have since I realized my family's shame about my horns and my brains. Now leave getting these vagrants settled to me and Nozomi-chan, and go do the job my brother hated, but you obviously love."

He still wasn't happy with anything that morning, but getting to university would improve his mood.

"Just don't call in a nuclear strike, and we'll all get along fine."

On his way, he passed the family cemetery where his aunt had permitted Kurama to bury the ashes of his daughter Mariko, and he saw Mayu-minus Wanta-head down to the beach to do her ritual cleaning in memory of her coarse friend Bando.

_*He died saving her, so maybe he wasn't all bad-aargh!-why do I have to forgive everyone who punches, betrays or shoots me?*_

Once in class, he again marveled at his own mind, freed of the impasse the amnesia had created in his abilities to learn and teach. He had actually spoken to Yuka about the both of them applying to a school with some reputation, now that the acumen he had known as a young man had returned. Ever practical, Yuka had pointed out that her new job as History Instructor and his as Biology Instructor were likely as good employment prospects as they might get going through even a very good school, unless it were the top elite like Todai. Even then, they might have ended up right there in Kamakura anyway, as the best jobs only opened up to teachers with experience-like they were getting there already.

"Kouta-Sensei?"

Tohru was the young man who told Kouta and Kurama the probable origin of Lucy and the role the hateful orphanage had played in it, including the loathsome murder of a puppy the girl saw as her only friend. Kouta had used his discretion to get him enrolled despite grades questionable for even a safety school.

"Can it wait, Tohru? I'm meeting Yuka-chan for lunch."

"This will be real quick. I have to get to my job at Ani-Chan's bread shop. Thank Mayu-chan again for recommending me there."

Kouta nodded.

"What do you need to know?"

Tohru shook his head.

"Everybody here says you explain biology and like sciences much better and more thoroughly than the old instructor."

"I like to think instead that I simply don't show my students contempt."

"Yeah-well-even I get most of what you say in class-but is it really all necessary?"

Kouta seemed stunned by these words.

"Is what necessary?"

"Well, all the stuff you teach-don't we have scientists for that? I mean, I don't see any Einsteins bursting out of a safety school like this, so, while you're good at it-what's the point?"

Kouta knew Tohru just well enough to feel he wasn't being snarky or snide. But he had to challenge the attitude behind his words.

"You tell me, Tohru-San. Should we leave all politics to the politicians?"

"I'm not following you, Sensei."

"Tohru-San, just as there are people in politics who only care for the money and power, there are those in the sciences who transact solely on the prestige and accolades. Just as there are politicians who lose themselves in their crusades, there are scientists who forget that research must be accompanied by restraint. Just as some of our political leaders preach the greater good while losing sight of it, some in the scientific community think that the breakthrough and the knowledge are ends unto themselves, uncaring of how someone else might use it. In either case, shouldn't even the lay-people be armed with knowledge of their own?"

Tohru checked his watch, nodded and gave a thumbs-up as he left.

"That-is why you are the Sensei."

Kouta was happy to see the man (who was slightly his elder) take a renewed sense of confidence away from their talk. Kouta for his part wished he hadn't been thinking about Kurama and Arakawa as he made his little speech.

"Well, I like it. I think you really got Tohru-San back on track, Kouta."

Yuka's tough-love ways served her well in a class where the young men-and some of the young women-felt compelled to have their gaze meet not her eyes, but her chest.

"Kouta? With Nana, Anna, and Doctor Arakawa staying with us, doesn't that place three important assets in this war in one vulnerable location?"

Kouta bit an apple and shook his head.

"If they haven't taken that into account already, I'll be worried for our race's survival. I...I..."

He looked at her. She looked good. In dreams, Nyu had even told him to forge the life together with Yuka that they could never have.

"I Love You."

The slap that came across his face was more of a shock than a pain.

"What have I told you about that, when we're still in mourning? Don't you miss our friend?"

Kouta rubbed his cheek, fighting off the urge to throttle her only by inches.

"The next time you do that, I better be in the onsen doing weird things with every woman we know. Otherwise, I will take you and..."

He got up, memories of words he could never take back to his little sister being among his only restraints. After he walked away, Yuka teared up and picked up her cell-phone.

"Mama? I-I-I did it again."

On the way to his next class, Kouta met the man who would complete his less-than-stellar day.

"Kouta-San?"

"Kenjiro-San, I am not able to talk right now. I mean no disrespect."

Kenjiro was Mayu's real father, married to his widowed sister-in-law Arika, Nana's real mother. They had a daughter all their own, named Hana, who told Kouta that she regarded Maple House as the magic place her sisters came back to until they could find each other again.

"Disrespect? Kouta-San, do I even deserve respect? That is why I must talk with you."

The man had burdens of his own, and Kouta reasoned that hearing someone else's problems could only make him feel better.

"Go on."

The older man looked down.

"I have been nothing to either Mayu or Nana. I am determined to make this up to them, no matter what the circumstances that caused it. Also, my wife has qualms about staying in our house, now that we know the horrors Mayu-chan suffered in the place that is now Hana's room. I can get quite a bit for it, what with all the people entering Kamakura lately..."

"Ken-San? Just what are you saying to me?"

"PAPA!"

Like a rocket, little Hana ran up, jump-kissed her father and snuggled up into Kouta's arms. In less slap-happy times, Yuka had observed the child's crush on Kouta. Arika was seen rounding the corner trying to catch the miniature thunderbolt before spying the trio. Hana looked at Kouta.

"Kouta Oto-chan? Did you say yes?"

Kenjiro froze up.

"Hana, No..."

Kouta shook his head as Arika arrived, but not in time to stop the child's mouth.

"Did Kouta-San say yes to our moving into the Kaede-Sou?"

Kouta felt his day scrape bottom once more again.

_**CHINA**_

As members of the Central Committee watched, rail cars supposedly loaded with the goods demanded by North Korea left a secured train station as words were exchanged to secure the release of senior Chinese diplomats and businessmen.

The small dog thought it was to have a gourmet feast, after breaking its leash. This was not to prove the case.


	2. Chapter 2

Folly

by Rob Morris

Chapter Two - The Folly Of Young Women

_NORTH KOREA_

A little man imagined that he was about to become very big indeed. He imagined that his state was about to become the Kuwait of bio-weaponry. No, not just the Kuwait. His state would be like those states in his one-time vice, American comic books. Like Latveria. Like Zandia. Small in size, but never ever to be touched. Never touched out of fear. Never touched out of respect.

And such a state had no need for sponsors. No need for guardian bears or dragons. No tolerance for a false imposed state that lay beneath an artificial line and kept half his lands from his grasp.

He chuckled inwardly. He'd always liked Hawaii. He now realized he could have it.

He even imagined the once-unthinkable. Since he was founding a new state, shouldn't he, and not his father, stand as supreme icon? His father, after all, had been a mere revolutionary promoted by Stalin for his purposes. His father's son was to be the God Of The New World.

The one set of trains arrived at last, and were scanned for radiation. There was none, only the massive amounts of grains, meats and the ultra-high-tech his former allies had been forced to yield up. He nodded, and the trains carrying Chinese diplomats, businessmen and other nationals went on its way. But no sighs of relief came from the released hostages. From those train cars, there were only screams.

The Dear One made a brief if odd mental note : After Japan had a more manageable government installed, he would make a state visit and check out the seaside villa of Kamakura. There he would look up a friend from one of the many elite colleges he had attended : Professor Yu Kakuzawa, with whom he had kicked back a lot of good brandy while complaining about tyrannical fathers. For the record, he would in fact soon be seeing Professor Kakuzawa.

The Chinese train conductors locked down the controls, with only a few knowing that this routine action sent a signal that activated all the high tech that had been demanded from the People's Republic at the point of the lives of its citizens and interests. This technology, which was said to be able to scan for American missiles even if launched from the East Coast, was in fact a series of satellite relays with facial recognition technology. The identities of the leader and all those just below him in rank were confirmed and confirmed again, well past the trained doubles who many times stood in for this elite. They were all really there.

Seventeen minutes past the time the trains laden with Chinese nationals had crossed into the provinces just after the border regions, these relays were put into use. China was not a place of fools. Nuclear weapons were not put into play for all the obvious reasons, diplomatic and practical. Plus, it was said a cockroach could survive a nuke-but a steel-toed boot slamming down on it was another story.

The large, compulsory gathering of everyone who mattered even a little in the small state was, as was once said, a target-rich environment. There are those who argued that weapons such as gravity bombs and thermobaric weapons were, to the ones being killed, far worse than nuclear weapons. If anyone in North Korea had survived that day, they might have debated this.

_CHINA_

China had not wished this. But in the many scenarios created in the event North Korea had to be brought to heel, it was decided that the response would be based on psychoanalysis of the late leader's level and depth of swagger in his defiance. They reasoned that even a seeming madman could pull a huge bluff, and the analysis would show whether he had dragon's breath, or was merely full of hot air.

The trained professionals did their work quickly, and were assured that this was no exercise to create a desired outcome. If the leader could be talked down, this was what they wanted.

The analysts soon issued a three-word report on the state of mind of the man who was now their enemy, and their target.

"Hitler in 1940."

Hail and Farewell, North Korea.

It should be noted, that, in its press releases regarding this horror, 'North Korea' was the name China used. When asked, those who would answer would merely say that the phrase 'Democratic People's Republic of Korea' was the name given to a steadfast ally, not the demon rogue brought down for reasons it would not discuss with anyone.

A message was transmitted to the official who had begun this sad sequence of events.

_**"The small, rabid dog has been put down. Our Thanks for making us aware the mongrel had turned."**_

The Minister knew his job prospects had now dramatically increased. He could even see those chambers in Beijing that no one ever saw, at least one day. But his appetite was gone, and images of what the people of Pyongyang must have gone through as they died haunted even his waking moments. He barely noticed his aide, Hu, enter the room.

"Minister, it's a report from the train stations our people were evacuated to. The first report had thirty people dead. It was interrupted and then resumed ten minutes later."

The Minister was not a spiritual man. But he felt judgment was at hand.

"And?"

Hu was in a daze, only duty spurring him to complete his report.

"They next said that, in the surrounding area, the death toll is at thirty thousand."

Hu stopped, breathed, and spoke again.

"It has been twenty minutes now, and another report has come in. But-I cannot bear to look at it."

Hu was forgiven this failure.

KAMAKURA, JAPAN

The Agent closed her secured cell-phone. Being roused from slumber was nothing she didn't expect. The news of the day was another story.

"Well, that lets out the North Koreans."

Inside her, her soul was chilled at what had just occurred, and doubly so that it was China had done so, taking out its own ally, however fractious. If China were that unnerved, it didn't bode well for anyone, horned or otherwise.

Without realizing it, she pulled out her gun. Instinct had taken over and she knew why when she looked over at the other futon in her room.

"Nozomi?"

Dropping the safety, she automatically checked Anna's room. She was sleeping quietly. While some of the math acumen she had known as a living computer had returned, her thoughts were now vastly less complicated than they had been, and she could sleep with ease.

_*How I envy you, girl. Easy sleep and I are long past being fast friends.*_

A sudden noise and a small laugh set her senses on fire. Moving like lightning for its source, she pushed a door open, to reveal Nozomi.

"Umm-a little privacy, if you don't mind?"

Blushing, the Agent closed the lavatory door and went back to their room. Nozomi emerged a few minutes later, still scowling.

"The first time all day I make it to the toilet without incident, and now this?"

"I'm-sorry. I saw you were gone, and feared the worst."

Nozomi sighed.

"I know you don't like to be alone, but still..."

The Agent bristled.

"I never said that! Why would you think such a thing?"

Nozomi shook her head.

"You're right-you have no fear of being alone-"

"Damned right!"

"-and I wear these diapers as a fashion statement."

Caught by a sharp observer whose courage was growing daily, the Agent moved quickly to change the subject.

"Where are all the others?"

"Hmm? Nana is helping Kenjiro-San, Arika-San and Hana-chan gather their things together before they move in. Kouta-San has made a home away from home at his former Professor's offices. Yuka-chan is staying with Emiko-Dono for a few nights. Wanta takes himself for little walks of late. Kurama-San is needed so much with the outbreak on so many fronts, and I can only say he is not here right now. As for Mayu-Chan? She spends her summer nights honoring the memory of one she cared for, a man who saved her from Nyu's other self. She cleans the beachfront in Enoshima he called home."

The Agent punched herself mentally for being a spy who didn't know all this to start with. Her sensei would never have forgiven her. Then again, he was never the forgiving type.

"Huh? My phone again? Yes, it's...Sensei? You're up and about? Someone you want me to...Hai, Sensei. Always."

Nozomi saw the stunned look on her face.

"You weren't expecting to hear from him?"

"Frankly, No. My-my sensei was badly wounded on a couple of occasions. Also, when I left his training, he made it clear I was not to contact him, ever again."

"And now?"

The Agent removed her glasses and wiped her face with a towel.

"Now, he wants to meet me down at the beach. Nozomi, do you remember what I told you?"

The once-gentle girl had seen her home invaded, her friends brutalized, and her gift nearly taken from her. So the words she next said were sad but no surprise.

"Headshots. Always go for headshots."

As Nozomi began the process of loading her gun, the Agent moved to at last confront her past. To confront the man who had left her with her crippling fear of being alone.

Down on that same beachfront, a young woman continued to fulfill what she saw as her duty.

"I know what you'd say, Bando-Saw."

A little joke of hers. The man she honored had always sounded like he was about to cut something in half.

"Yes, Yes, I Know."

She tried not to think about him directly. Even thinking about the ice that had grown between Kouta and Yuka was less painful. She tried another tack.

"I wonder where Wanta is..."

It didn't help. The small dog liked to wander Kamakura, and he always came back safely, just like the night he ditched that nasty woman and came back to her. She could no longer feel panic when he vanished. Even when Nyu was Lucy, she wouldn't hurt him, and Wanta had taken some painful hits.

"I know what you'd say, Saw-San. That no matter how much I clean it up, it's still the same damn dirty beach."

"It's still the same damn dirty beach."

"Well, of course you'd say that, Bando-San..."

She turned so fast she nearly pulled a neck muscle. Her eyes teared up immediately.

"Nooooooo..."

The twice-rebuilt man managed his facsimile of a smile.

"Now, you stupid brat. Didn't I tell you that nothing could ever kill my beautiful self?"

She embraced him, not caring if he batted her away. The fact that he didn't almost made her suspicious. Instead, his artificial right hand mussed her hair.

"Hey-HEY! I'll rust, you weepy monster! These gears cost money-not to mention my prospects of ever getting laid again."

Mayu thought she saw Wanta out of the corner of her eye, but instead of calling to him she took in the meaning of Bando's crude words.

"I lied to you."

"Yeah...was kinda wondering about that."

Mayu had shot from cosmic joy to cosmic shame in all of ten seconds. It almost made her feel ill.

"I am SOOOOO sorry, Bando-San! You cared for me enough to save my life from that monster, and I..."

Bando covered her mouth.

"Hey! I know that you lied. We established that, alright? What I wanna know is why."

Mayu found she could not look at him as she spoke.

"I...I never had a real home, before the Kaede-Sou. I learned one day I meant nothing to my mother, and my stepfather could be...very cruel...I mean by that he would speak harshly to me for no reason at all..."

As she fumbled in and out of words, she again found that she had used up Bando's limited patience once more.

"Still lying to me?"

"I wasn't, I swear it!"

Bando audibly sighed.

"Let me tell you a quick story. The current Chief of the Kamakura PD was once a fellow SAT officer. We actually got along, and still do. After Lucy tore me apart, he was in the local precinct offices when they brought in a chikan who grabbed a chick's ass at Gokurakuji Station. Now, the SAT had people dead and wounded because of Lucy, but the Kakuzawas up and told us to stay the hell out of it. The Chikan hears him yell about a dangerous little girl, and the slime then brags on how he 'knows how to handle' little girls. That's all my pal had to hear. He unloaded his weapon into the jerk, and ends up basically demoted to local cop, even if it's as Chief."

Mayu felt a chill run through her as Bando kept on.

"The guy he killed was a pedo with a record. That pedo had a stepdaughter. That stepdaughter better stop lying to me, like, yesterday."

Mayu felt an eruption inside her. Kouta-San knowing her shame was one thing. He would never bring up or discuss what he knew with her. The only reason he'd even brought it up was to assure her that her stepfather was dead and could no longer haunt her. But Bando-San had treated it almost lightly. Her debts to him aside, that she could not permit.

"You want to know why I lied about knowing Nyu? Because up until that night on the beach, Nyu had been my sister! My boob-grabbing, mentally-challenged, floor-wetting, annoying-as-hell sister who happened to have horns! I made my promise to you while barely getting you to keep to yours concerning my safety! I care for Bando-san, but consider my position. I went from a house where I was either a doll who had grown too large for the little girl my mother proved to be and where the man who had agreed before God to be my father and instead used me..."

Her voice broke, but she regained it.

"...used me. I left that place, and then met the streets. I wasn't on them as long as some, and they didn't drain me as much as some. But it was all so close, and then I met Kouta and Yuka. You know Kouta, Bando-San? The one who did what you couldn't? What the entire Japanese military failed to?"

She felt the raw rage that her horned sisters knew all too well, not to mention the man she called 'Papa', the one who had brought down Lucy, not with a gun, but with love alone in his heart.

"In their sight, I have food, and I have warmth. On a day where all she does is smile at me before I go to school, Yuka-San shows me more concern than my false mother had in years, maybe in whole life. I know Kouta Oto-San is a young man, but satisfying his urges at my expense would never enter his mind. For me and the others, he, with no training, grabbed a gun and held it to someone's head. Could he have taken down that monster-man like you did? Maybe not. But he would have died trying, and done it gladly. You think YOU suffered by way of Lucy-San? And in his house, I have had multiple sisters and known things like peace, safety, love and acceptance. Those things were as alien to me as to Lucy, and if not for him, I could be like she was, willing to kill a sister to gain her silence. That is Maple House, Bando-San, and that is why I lied to you. Not to mention, getting close to you can drive a girl crazy-because you can be the world's biggest _**ASSHOLE**_, Human or Diclonius!"

She dropped to the sands beneath her, exhausted and spent. Bando started chuckling.

"There. Was that so hard?"

As she breathed in all the air she had expelled during her rant, Mayu saw Bando nod and keep on.

"So, in other words, you had it good in your new home and were unwilling to let old Bando step in and blow it up, even for the sake of honor?"

Mayu found she couldn't meet his gaze.

"Forgive me. You gave up so much to aid me, and you gave that aid without hesitation. I have repaid you with lies and invective. I ask forgiveness for my betrayal of your trust."

Bando used his cane to nudge her to stand up.

"Now, look at me. BRAT, I SAID LOOK AT ME!"

She managed this with great difficulty, tear-filled eyes awaiting final judgment.

"I'm..."

"Shut Up. Having your hide tanned from the inside out by a sadistic fuck, then having the ones who were supposed to keep you well shove you aside like a used scumbag can make your morals and judgment slip away like the grease on these gears of mine."

He then said words that she could never have expected.

"And I should know, right?"

As promised, Emiko had set aside a space in her family's burial place near the shrines for the late and tragic Mariko Kurama. The ashes of her recovered head and legs lay beneath the marker, as there was little else.

"Onee-Sama? Nana is here to honor your memory and speak with you. I am here to say that I am keeping our Papa well, and he now lives with me at Maple House. I wish you could have come there to live, Marikonee. In your short time, you never knew how the world is full of so many wonderful things. Nana has trouble even listing them all-or I will, when I learn how to write better."

She looked about. She was alone, and so did not have to adjust her talk to keep out certain details.

"Of course, the war with the other girls like us is keeping Papa away right now. You know the other girls-the sad ones who have no Papa or Mama - Nana has about six of those, last time she checked, seven, if you count Emiko-Dono, who also has horns like us but no arms-no extra arms. I hope Hiromi-Dono is at peace. Nana never even found out her name till after we met, Marikonee, but...but Nana once thought she was my Mama, too. I feel like I stole from you. Nana didn't mean to."

While Mariko had been nearly two years her junior, Nana felt that calling her the elder sister was proper, owing to her being Kurama's true daughter.

"Nana knows that, when we all walk in Heaven together, Papa will hold you first, and save a hug for me."

She had already sensed him walk up behind her, even as she broke into tears.

"Nana, there's no need to be so dramatic. The way you're falling apart, someone would think that I was the one who died. Your Papa is right here, and he adores you. Even if-hmph-you do cheat on him with Kouta-San."

His smile was warm and genuine, and his desire to hold her was undiminished by his missing arm. But his tiny joke set her off.

"Nana does not cheat, Papa! But Kouta-San gives so much of himself so easily, and his face feels good in my chest."

Kurama waited a moment for Nana to say she was only joking. He sighed and shook his head.

"There are things we will have to talk about..."

"Nana loves Papa and wants to make babies with him!"

"Yes...things like that."

She caught the downturn of his face, enough to make her concerned and a little bit afraid, but not enough to actually hurt her or make her panic.

"Hear this. Hear it well, and hear it without editing or wishful thinking. This is the unshakeable will of Daisuke Kurama..."

"Your name is Daisuke?"

"Yes, I..."

"How come Nana never heard your given name before?"

"That's not important right now."

"Ummm...and since Lucy wasn't Nyu's real name either, and you had her captive..."

What Mayu had warned Kurama about - A Nana Moment - had arrived, and it was just as the young girl said. Kurama did not have time for this. His brief visit to his daughters, living and dead, was nearing its end. Best intelligence said China was giving in to North Korean demands, and he was needed at Saseba HQ.

"Nana! Stop this and listen to me. I love, worship and adore you, but there will be no babies-and no...ummm...efforts in that general direction, either."

"Efforts, Papa?"

He heard Hiromi's chuckles from the afterlife. Even while pregnant, she had joked that he would run like wildfire from his child's questions on that tender subject.

"Nana, we cannot have babies together."

"But you said Nana can have babies, now that she's a Regina-Class Diclonii with chromosomal base pairs exchanged between myself and Lucy upon her passing, leading to a latent tendency towards reproductive capability becoming an active or pronounced tendency."

Kurama' s eyes went wide.

"What did you just say?"

Nana stopped for a second.

"I'm really not sure."

He tried again.

"Nana, for one thing, if your situation has changed, mine has not. After Mariko was born, I had the operations needed to ensure I would never have children again. Mine are the most dangerous genes to pass on, since I am the only one known to have someone that Lucy created in turn infect me."

Nana lit up, and Kurama sensed that nothing good was in the offing.

"Nana hears it's a lot of fun to try! Mayu-chan snuck in this Devadee where these girls meet this taxi driver, and they're really kind of dumb, because he looks like an evil taxi driver, and he doesn't take them where they're supposed to go, and they fall asleep and then wake up and he's taken their..."

"NANA!"

"...cell phones. Yes, Papa?"

He resigned himself to bluntness.

"Nana is my daughter."

She shook her head.

"Nana has said that she does not want to be a substitute for Marikonee. She wants to be your wife."

He almost smiled at the sheer cuteness of 'Marikonee', but kept to his message.

"You are no substitute. Mariko is dead. It hurts like Hell to say it, and to think of how Kakuzawa and Nousou in effect made her death a lingering one cuts me more deeply than Lucy's vectors ever could. But Mariko is dead, and if I ever encountered any more clones, I would have to put them down, as surely as I did a thousand of your infant sisters. Only now, it would be worse, because what I feared of those tiny lives would be true of these copies of my baby."

Nana frowned.

"The one called Barbara almost seemed to remember you. Maybe others like her..."

"We are past that point. Whether through the madness of the Kims or the Kakuzawas, true all-out war is imminent. I have horrid suspicions about what Kakuzawa did to the virus when he weaponized it. Nana as their Queen will see this firsthand and come to a hideous point of choosing. But though she is their Queen, she is my Princess, first, last and always. Even if we could both make babies and have them grow up strong, wise and safe, this can never be for the simple reason I have already stated."

"NO! We'll-figure something out. That goofy lady doctor who spends all her time in the onsen can help us. We'll name the girls Mariko and Hiromi, to honor our family. We'll..."

Kurama did not raise his voice, and that gave what he said added emphasis to bring the point home to a heart-broken Nana.

"You're being ridiculous. Nana is my daughter."

She broke away from him and ran off crying. In the distance, Kurama saw the small dog, Wanta, and almost went to pet the animal for comfort. But he saw him wander off with another dog, an odd-looking Boston Terrier.

"Do dogs have such concerns as ours, Wanta? If not, I think I may even envy you your life."

At the beach front, Mayu stood in abject shock at what she had been told.

"You? You, Saw-San?"

"Saw-San? Heh! I like that, kid. As for what you're askin' after, yeah. I don't go on about it, any more than you. And No-it didn't make me who I came to be. That was always gonna be me, butt-riding psycho or no. It did-well, hell, it nearly broke me."

He paused and spoke again.

"It did break me."

Mayu was no longer certain which questions he would answer, and which ones would be batted back in typical Bando fashion, so she pressed ahead.

"How did it happen-how did it happen to you?"

He knew exactly what she meant, and it had echoes of the question a very broken man had asked himself.

"I'm a soldier who gets sent places to do impossible things. A local Asian looney-toon tin-pot had made it his business to take away some of our Emperor's subjects. I was sent to get info and maybe get some of them back. It didn't go so well. I was -given- to the dick dictator's favorite breaker. While he polluted me, he talked at length about how polluted Japan and South Korea's gene pools were. Did you know they have a thing about blacks up there? I didn't. I mean race-theory stuff that a white-sheeted Klansman from the deepest South in the US you can go would call crazy. I almost think our pals the Kakuzawas might take a pass on it too, but they were into some crazy shit."

Mayu had never felt closer to this man she held so dear.

"You got your revenge, right?"

Bando looked a bit surprised and maybe a bit disappointed to hear this coming from her. His source had told him the dumb-ass incursion Kakuzawa had staged on Maple House had badly shaken its residents. But this was the same girl who had stopped him from killing the sleazeball with the John Lennon spectacles.

"Yeah. I fed him-what he put into me-and NOT by way of cutting them off. You do the math and logistics of that one."

Mayu did, and then said a word he did not want to hear.

"Good. Good for you, Bando-Dono."

The soldier felt he had a duty to snap the civilian out of her war mentality.

"First up, brat-I am never not no damn Dono. I'm a San - I earn my pay. Second, how can you feel good about something as rotten as that? Didn't you hear me? I fed a guy his own junk by bending him in half!"

Mayu didn't seem cold, but nor did she relent in her viewpoint.

"Whoever hurts someone I love is my enemy, and their end should be painful. Did you know I've heard rumors that my mother has been forced to sell herself? I hope it's true. I hope the people she deals with hurt her. I hope she catches a disease and die-"

"SHE'S YOUR MOTHER, SHE GAVE YOU LIFE, YOU UNGRATEFUL LITTLE BITCH!"

Mayu again did not relent.

"She allowed my innocence to be taken by someone she met in a bar, and made me the villain when he abused me. She signed me away in a heartbeat to two college students she did not know at all. Yuka-chan is my mother."

Bando sneered.

"The tsundere head-case with a hitter complex-and probably a few more complexes? Her? Really?"

Mayu leaned forward.

"Who told you she was like that?"

Bando leaned in as well.

"You did."

Mayu softened at last just a bit.

"Would you have me honor and obey that woman, Bando-Saw?"

Bando shrugged, though he had to shift his cane to pull it off without falling.

"Hell, No. You're probably right about what that cunt has coming to her. But you don't ever say that. You owe her life, at least, so wishing her dead is not something you do. Don't waste your hate on someone like her. Now, Lucy-she was one worth hating. She said what she was gonna do to you, and she did it. No hiding behind maze-logic that makes a little girl's rape into a seduction. Hey-she did try and kill you. Why no hate for her?"

Mayu said something outright that Kurama had tried to dance around, when her post-Lucy medical reports came in.

"When she died, Lucy-San reached out and healed not just Kouta-Oto, but all of us in many respects. She couldn't change history, Bando-Saw. But strictly speaking, I am a virgin once again. Even certain damage to my intestinal track and scars have gone away. Her love may have been horribly twisted by her sad life, but I think she really did care for me."

"Yeah-right. Well, forgetting your poor brave eunuch here, what about Ole Blue-Hair, Number Seven? You know, your sister or cousin or-whatever? Her arms and legs aren't growing back anymore than mine are."

"Nana says she has made her peace with Lucy. Also, she no longer ages fast and can have children if she likes."

Again, the restored man was very skeptical.

"With Kurama? He lost his stones years before mine. I..."

He fell silent as she simply embraced him. Against the humanity he had not had replaced, she felt really good.

"I will not debate Bando-Saw. I will simply tell him again that I love him, and am overjoyed that he is returned, and that we can be together at last."

Bando no longer bothered to disguise that he cared for the girl. But he also knew a line had to be drawn.

"Mayu, please back off."

She seemed both shocked and delighted to hear her name from his lips.

"Why? We two care for each other. That sets everything else aside."

What he would do now would hurt them both, but principles sometimes did just that. In fact, they did that most times.

"It doesn't. It can't. Kid, I fought off a disgusting pedo for you. Do you think I did that just so I could turn around and hurt you with your consent?"

"Even if you-it would never hurt. Not with you."

He was on the verge of making a size joke for his vanished body parts, but knew he had to stay on track.

"It can hurt in other ways. You're too young. You still have time to be a kid. I don't even know how long this nightmare of hydraulics and tubes can keep me going."

Mayu insisted on keeping on.

"Then that is how long we'll have together. Whatever we have during that time, whatever form it takes, I will treasure."

He wanted to yell again, but chose a far different tack.

"You remind me of her. You always have."

Before she could respond, he continued.

"Okay. After what I told you went down, I needed retraining. I needed to get my edge back. The American Special Forces were training with their Apache mentors. Tough old Indians who cut their teeth fighting Adolf-and us. Japan requested I be taken in, and they agreed. I met enough Blacks-I mean, African-Americans, to tell me that the scum-sucker who broke me was also full of shit on that racial stuff. I also met her. The whole thing took place in Hawaii, on an island the map kind of overlooks, if you know what I mean."

"She-was Hawaiian?"

Mayu was already feeling jealous of this woman she knew absolutely nothing about.

"Not by birth. She was from the US mainland. Her adopted folks kind of ditched her while they were all on vacation. Said they weren't 'bonding'. Yuppie Scum. The family she found in Hawaii worked her, but they also fed and kept her, and she said she loved them."

The big loud man almost seemed to grow misty.

"She was pretty much your age. You know all the things pedo-types say about the kids they go after? That 'they're so mature for their age' crapola? The practiced bit where they say they have 'a special relationship', and all those other bullshit lines that only make you want to build a giant orange juicer and give them one final squeeze?"

He nodded.

"I used every last one of those, because every last one was true of her. When I-when we were together, I was a man once again, and I treasured the fact that I would see her grow even more beautiful as the years went by."

Mayu was feeling sick to her stomach. She now understood why Kouta had lied to young Nyu about Yuka's gender, and wished Bando would do the same.

"You loved her?"

His yellow electronic eyes looked at her.

"I married her. And that is when the shit hit the fan. Some guys in the unit I trained with hit on girls way too young for anybody's good. But see, they didn't make them their wives. I was thrown out of training-seems our Native American trainer had a granddaughter about the same age. I was told to leave Hawaii, and also that, if I didn't want to have my awesome ass ridden in prison, I was never to contact her again, and to refuse her efforts to contact me."

He sat down on the wooden steps back up to the boardwalk.

"What could I do? Either way, we were gonna be prevented from seeing each other again. Like I said, I am what I am, to quote the sailor. But for her, I wanted to be more, and without her, I felt an ache that nothing Lucy did to me could match. Then along comes you. You found me all wounded, just like she did. And I feel it all over again. The worst part? I think she must hate me. I think she must hate my lousy, deserting guts! She must..."

A third voice interrupted Bando.

"She wants you back. She prays every day just to hear from you, and would take you back if even a tenth of your body was still intact."

Mayu looked and saw the woman she knew as the Agent. Bando shook his head.

"How can that be? I stayed away, even when she was of age."

The very tough woman removed her glasses, and there was only affection in her eyes.

"She knows the kinds of pressure those hypocrites threw at you, and some of them were still in positions of authority for years after."

Mayu asked the obvious.

"Is she the girl you left behind?"

The Agent smiled.

"Only in a manner of speaking. When he left, I gained my fear of being alone. I had to become strong."

Bando touched her cheek.

"You did that. I gave you a hard time in training because it was all I could give you."

Mayu felt an oddity she couldn't place.

"So you are his wife?"

Both operatives laughed loudly at that. Bando rolled his eyes, which had been upgraded for that at his insistence.

"Kid, our Hula-Girl here is into wool, not sausage. Not that I blame her. With the sheer level of wimpery in this world, even if I went for guys, I'd probably join a monastery first."

The Agent nodded.

"Mayu-chan, the girl-the woman-Sensei is talking about is my mother. I too, am Bando, though it is only now that I can use my father's name."

Bando actually managed a real smile, and looked very proud of his daughter.

"Now, kid-I am so damn happy that the two of you know each other. Like I said, I don't know how long I have, and I would pleased as piss if you two could become friends and-well, sisters. I've never been able to give my girl anything, and someone who can keep her from ending up like me in the few wrong ways I have would mean a lot. Waddya say?"

Mayu now also understood how Yuka felt, when her reunion with Kouta did not go as planned. It was not an insight she had ever desired. In tears, her dream dead on the vine, she fled Bando, father and daughter. The father sighed.

"Well, that could have gone better."

"Gee, Sensei, ya think?"

"Don't snark your dad, ya butch bitch."

She just smiled at him.

"Okay-Papa-or should I say Grandpapa?"

His eyes had no lids, but they went wide.

"What the F-"

She made a pistol-shaped gesture with her finger and thumb. She winked.

"Kidding-Gotcha!"

As Bando's heart regulators kicked in, he wondered exactly why he had passed his sense of humor on to her as well.

A moment later, his cell-phone rang.

"What? Damn. Are you sure? Yeah, I know-but when you give news like that, Kurama-yeah, I planned to stay around Maple House, anyway. I think I'll piss on Lucy's gr-hey, kidding, alright? Just-this is all a bit much. Okay."

Agent Bando regarded her father.

"So?"

The elder Bando now felt his age.

"Ummm...China moved against North Korea. And by move against, I mean to say, there is no North Korea anymore. They did it conventionally, so no radiation clouds. But we think maybe some of Kim's horned girls got in China before it happened."

The Agent had known of the first piece of information, but let her father keep on.

"Why do they think that?"

He got up, and started cleaning the beach.

"You ever seen the Three Gorges Dam, Hula-Girl?"

"Can't say that I have. I never really got out of Beijing, during my 'unofficial visits'. You'd be surprised what an American-looking spy can accomplish there."

She started aiding him in the clean-up without knowing why.

"Well, you're not going to be seeing it, like, ever. Because a force that the Chinese o-press refuses to identify took it out entirely, and they have no idea how many people have been lost to flooding and debris, not to mention power outages like you would not believe. They're also not saying what the Americans just told us. Large armored columns have been activated all over China, but not even one of them is on any of the borders-and oh yeah, the Yank Sat-Intel says that these columns and the soldiers in them aren't doing so well. The Russkies are on high alert, and so are the Iranians, which means everybody else in the Middle East is too...and..."

He stopped.

"I just now realized. We're just over a year out from Kakuzawa's virus launch. Hospitals around the world are gonna be seeing a surprise in the maternity ward, if they haven't already."

The Bandos kept right on cleaning that same damned dirty beach.

In the beneath-campus offices once occupied by the late Professor Kakuzawa, Kouta opened his ringing cell-phone, opened the line but did not speak into it. He simply stared at it as the caller pleaded.

"Kouta-San? Please-I'm sorry. I should not have hit you. I don't mean to-so often. You took me by surprise. Don't be like this-it was only one little slap-MOTHER! I know I shouldn't minimize it when he's so upset, but it really was only a little-"

Kouta finally spoke.

"If you think this is all about a slap, then maybe you really are crazy."

He hung up, and turned the cell-phone off.

At her mother's house, Yuka began to cry.

"I think maybe I really am."

Yuka's mother sensed that it was perhaps time to speak plainly to her daughter.

To Be Continued...

_**Author's Note : The given name 'Daisuke' for Doctor Kurama is, like the name Emiko for Yuka's mother, derived from the first 'Godzilla' film, being the name of the tragic and tortured scientist, Doctor Serizawa.**_


	3. Chapter 3

Folly

by Rob Morris

Chapter Three - The Folly Of Grown Women

_1_

CHINA

The rapidly-rising Minister was beginning to get a severe case of career vertigo, and felt sure he would soon get a nose-bleed worthy of those absurd Japanese animations, the ones where a bulge in a young man's pants could somehow never be depicted. He turned to his aide, a sturdier sort than he had once credited him for being.

"Hu, what, exactly, is my title at present?"

Hu was glad to look to his manuals, books and E-Readers. It was loads better than looking out at the mind-bending spectacle before them.

"Impossible to say, Minister. You are the effective head of state, but this must be vetted and challenged by nineteen elders in the party, men and women of august reputation-"

Hu closed his laptop.

"None of whom can be located. We believe they were probably here. Everyone who...who used to be anyone was here. It was to be a celebration of an enormous victory."

The Minister looked out and recalled a recent viewing of the History Channel. His TV's content filter had been 'mysteriously' disabled many years ago.

"The Americans, during their Civil War, had gentlemen and ladies of leisure out to watch the first Battle Of Bull Run. It was to be a rout. And it surely was. The Southern Rebels called it Manassas Junction, and counted it as a great victory. Hu, I do not think that what happened here even stands on the same level of incompetence as that foolishness. Are we even a power anymore?"

This was not an idle question. Around their position, chunks of what had been Three Gorges Dam floated like discarded tree limbs. While the destruction of the dam alone had not been enough to bring together all the myriad concerns of a great power in a hideous synchronization, the planning for what was supposed to occur indulgingly fed that one mega-disaster and in a stroke, almost a century of gaining its own back had been flushed away for the PRC.

"A member of the Central Committee had struck out on his own and determined to face down these girls himself, looking to show that one party official was all that was needed to bring mere children to heel."

The Minister was trying hard not to crack wise. But as the carnage seemed ever more real with each passing hour, he came to realize, it was crack wise, or crack wide open, perhaps never to gain his way back from insanity.

"Did he also hope to command the tides to aid him in this?"

Nearly every culture on Earth had an apocryphal story of a mad ruler who tried to do just that, so Hu did not inquire as to the reference.

"Perhaps so, sir. But if he did, then this hubris was quickly met and joined, first by all his peers, and then by all his elders or as some might argue, superiors. The feeling began to build that, if China could make these wild children obey, it would make the Olympics seem paltry by comparison. Soon, there was no real name in the Republic that was avoiding this place-that should really have been avoided at all costs."

Yet, the Minister knew, once one who was highly placed enough made a choice, those under them were under no illusions about changing their minds. This was true anywhere on the planet, but his beloved country as always carried this forward in ways others never could, and more was the pity.

"So, Hu? Isn't it so that those highest up are attended by those next highest, and so forth? And isn't it so that so very many powerful folk would be protected by the People's Armies, sent out in great numbers?"

"It is so, Minister. Sadly, it was never more so than what happened while we were in transit."

The Minister fought back a witticism even he in his agitated state found repulsive.

"Then when these towns, cities, and villages-to say nothing of crowded roads and railways - were struck down, many if not most of those who could aid those who survived were themselves swept away. Am I right?"

"Yes, sir. You are right."

_*It is always the same*_, thought the Minister. _*We spend decades casting out foreign conquerors, begin to claim our own once again, and show the world that we are a titan to be wary of, not a treasure-filled grave to be looted at their whim. Then, an event comes that could happen to anyone, but chooses us instead. This invariably combines with our own hubris to slap us back harder than all the missiles in the world could ever hope to dream of. The why of it astounds me less than the sickening repetition that seems to mock us and all we have built.*_

A chair was pulled up for the man who the international news had already begun to speculate on, and for whom the talking heads for once had no clue about, because he had never been in line for any sort of consideration. As to why news reports were bothering with this instead of the chaos in China, this answer was simple. In every instance, their governments had ordered, persuaded or 'guided' them away from covering the real news : The Births of some very strange children, all of them girls, and the subsequent sighting of older ones, some with strange powers and murderous intent.

This silence was already breaking, and would not be able to last for another month. The brief silence the Minister enjoyed was broken by his assistant.

"Minister, we have video."

From the deck of the multi-hulled ship, the Minister rose and went to the Bridge. The realization was slowly dawning on him that no dismissive party official was about to show up and put him in his place. His place was now at the top. He just now wondered exactly what he was at the top of, and what that was even worth. Trying to digest an apocalyptic feast of information, he arrived at a question he cursed himself for not asking earlier.

"The Great Dam held an incredible amount of water. But not this much. Not what we are seeing here."

Hu turned to one of the scientists drafted for this crisis, and pieced together an answer.

"Minister, it is now believed many of the tributary bodies of water used to both feed and be fed by the Dam were also sabotaged by our enemy. It seems as well they found a way to place the dam so far above capacity, if they had not destroyed it, it might have come down in any event."

The Minister didn't need to be told this enemy was clever, but the coordination involved still made him feel ill. The video began to play. Onscreen, a man, once august and feared, shook his finger at a teenage girl sent forward by the attackers. There was something odd atop her head, which was hard to make out.

_*Children should not be sent to conduct acts of foolish terror. But now there is no need as well. Your leader, once our ally in North Korea, is no more, and with him went his followers. He is gone, and you may surrender without being killed.*_

The girl smiled.

_*He's dead? Good -but I wasn't one of the ones who arrived from there. They tell me they never liked him - and really-"*_

The former Premier's head flew off along with his shaming finger. The girl had never been closer than three meters, and had never even touched him.

_*-I don't much like you. The Leader was an ape, like the rest of you. But don't worry, unlike all of you, we don't keep damned dirty apes in cages. We get rid of them.*_

The girl, wearing a fluffy green and black sweater, began to float as a hail of gunfire from all directions failed to even disturb her concentration. Even rocket-propelled grenades failed at this task. When a shell from a carrier at sea targeted her, she winced at last.

_*Gotta do it now!*_

She caused the dam's topmost layer to shake slightly, really only its skin, and not enough to do more than warp the ground in some spots. Then, the shell struck her force shield, and while it did not penetrate, it carried her far and away, well out of control, likely to her doom.

Murmurs from the crowds of officials, hangers-on and military officers said that these attackers, while obviously deadly on a personal level, were paper tigers in anything as big as an attack on a landmark.

_*The dam is bursting! How?*_

Before the cameras went out of commission entirely, the view shifted to the upper part of the dam, where about a hundred figures gestured at it. The Minister caught on fast, though it was his desperate wish not to.

"She wasn't trying to break the dam herself - she was merely signaling the other ones like her, who lay in wait."

Hu interrupted this moment of sad realization.

"Minister! This vessel's safety can no longer be guaranteed. Pieces of debris floating towards us are too large to be survived or navigated. The helicopter will be here soon, and on it-the corpse of the girl your esteemed predecessor attempted to treat with."

Glad for a little bit of evidence, even if he could really do nothing with it, the Minister tried his best to really be the leader of his nation's armed forces.

"Evacuate as many of these brave soldiers and sailors as possible. Whoever is left - direct them to scuttle the ship where they feel safe and disembark. Inform them - their leaders can offer no guarantees at this point. They should try and meet up with any remaining authority that seems viable and interested in something besides its own hind quarters."

The waters around them were now of a sickly color. Things had been knocked loose in the floods : Ammo, pollutants, the bodies of the lost, not to mention their belongings. Arguably, the dam's loss, even enhanced by the attackers' methods, had flooded only a small portion of China's vastness. But the floodwaters were expanding, not receding, and in their probable path was found a refugee crisis like no other in recorded history, with all attendant chaos reliably in tow.

"Minister-our ride."

Boarding the helicopter, the Minister and Hu knew to wait until they were well underway before attempting to see the corpse of the girl attacker. Hu sat and continued to check his laptop for news.

"Please tell me there is a mastermind somewhere making demands."

"Nothing so James Bond-ian, Minister-nor anything concrete. But news from abroad contraindicates any enemy attack as we have known it."

"Explain."

Hu continued to search as he did.

"Britain and the rest of Europe are moving to destroy these girls as soon as they are born. While a wise precaution, it seems pointless - these girls are now the only children being born. In Ireland, they have voted to end all restrictions on abortion - but many will never heed this, and in Poland, the Catholic Church refuses to even consider altering its stance on this subject. In Japan, Hokkaido is a blood zone - the government may soon seal it off. South Korea is attempting to reclaim the dead world that was the North-they haven't even officially condemned our actions there just yet. Fuu-in Russia, Putin is blaming Chechens for these attacks."

It was a wide world. But the Minister knew whose actions Hu was saving for last.

"The American President attempted to ask Congress for a bill automatically euthanizing these children - still only girls - at birth or before. He was called a traitor by anti-abortion 'Right To Life' congress people who are now-now holding parades in the American heartland to show off these children. Many have been raided by elders of these girls, who then slaughter those who tried to protect them."

Hu had no information on where these older horned girls inside America came from, but in a time where nothing boded well, this sounded particularly bad. Once they were high enough, a doctor guided them to the corpse in question.

"What the hell is this? She was a young teenager in the video. Are we sure this is the right girl?"

The Minister and Hu were told of how the girl was located, and the methods seemed sound. She had apparently been found after the impact she suffered, horns broken and mind infantile, a state in which she lingered for two days before finally dying.

Except now, the girl in the yellow and green sweater was now a woman at least twice that age.

_2_

MAPLE HOUSE

Mayu heard the phone, ringing far too early for her comfort. She had been trying to avoid Kenjiro-San, so desperate to patch things up with his long-lost daughter. But Mayu wasn't ready to forgive him just yet.

"Hello? Yes, this is the Kaede-Sou-no."

The voice on the other end was among the very last Mayu expected to ever hear again. In fact, if Nyu herself had been on the other end, it would have been less of a shock - and much more welcome, even if Nyu had been Lucy again - and this was with the full realization that Lucy had tried to kill her, had in fact maimed Nana, and killed Kouta's family. The only one Mayu wanted to hear less from than this caller was that horrible man, and with Agent-San around, even that didn't scare her as much. But it was not an enemy of that sort.

"Mayu? Girl, is that you?"

Mayu felt her stomach drop out. She was completely lost for speech.

"Answer me, damn you!"

Damn her. Damn her? No, Mayu thought. She wasn't the one who was damned. The rage that rose up in her gut gave her the power to speak once again.

"What do you want, Mother?"

The response was painfully if not pathetically predictable.

"That's a fine way to speak to the one who gave you life!"

Mayu was having none of it.

"Do you want me to hang up?"

With that, Mayu seized control of the conversation, for all that was worth.

"No! Please don't hang up. I barely found a working phone, and had to pay most of what I had left to use it. You don't know what it's like here! Hokkaido is a war zone. Those demons are swarming - there is no place of safety anywhere."

Mayu fired off a broadside.

"Yes. I can see how not having a safe place could be a problem."

It went completely unnoticed by someone far too selfish to comprehend anything not relating to her own comfort.

"Then you will sponsor me?"

Mayu's confusion was honest, though she half-suspected what was coming.

"Sponsor you? For what?"

The pleading woman now had the nerve to sound exasperated.

"Are you stupid? The government will put me on one of the last trains out of here, but only if I have a confirmed place to stay. Now, will you sponsor me? I need an answer now."

Mayu breathed in, and tried to collect her thoughts. She had thought this woman's ability to astonish her had passed along with her surrendered custody. She had been wrong.

"Well, this isn't my house, is it? It's leased by Kouta-San, through his Aunt Emiko. He isn't here today, and she is with her daughter, Yuka-San."

The pleading had returned, layered with annoyance.

"Those college kids? They took you in, right? Agreed to be responsible for you? Well, then, they have a duty to you, and you have a duty to your mother!"

While waiting for food. While waiting for a better life. While waiting for a Kouta-attack that never came and never would, which she later cursed herself for ever believing would happen. While waiting to see if the man she now proudly called Papa would live after being shot by a woman who now shared a room with Nozomi. Through all these times of waiting, Mayu had become extremely patient. So she waited again, and kept back the considerable bile she felt towards this primal loser.

"Mother, we two have some deeply felt issues, to say the least."

She reminded herself to keep it formal. Emotion would best serve the one who didn't seem to have any.

"Is that what worries you? Obviously, if you do this for me, I could one day see my way to forgive you for ruining my marriage. I realize your stepfather could be a stern and difficult man. That you two couldn't get along is understandable. Still, that forgiveness may take a while. I'll have to see for myself that you've changed, and grown more mature."

Keeping emotion out of it was now no longer an option. It was time for the girl to avenge her own tears, and her own spilt blood. Mayu did a quick calculation.

"I would say about fifty people."

"What is this nonsense? What about fifty people?"

Mayu felt a grin forming, and she didn't fight it off. Was this, she wondered, what Bando-San felt when targeting a lowlife for extermination?

"If you were to disappear, who would care? You asked me that, Mother. Well, the answer is, between friends and those I now call family, for me, that answer is about fifty people. How many do you have, Mother? Ask yourself that."

This time, Mayu was ready for the anger.

"You faithless child! You damned, faithless child! You would doom your poor mother to die horrifically by one of those evil horned girls?"

Mayu felt so good, she wondered if she was dreaming. The echo of the speakerphone from the other side confirmed the situation's reality.

"My mother is named Yuka. If it were her or Kouta-San, I would go to Hell myself to protect either of them. Don't come crying to me about ties you gladly severed a long time ago. It hurt. It hurt, Mother. But when I told you this, when I asked you to do the minimum most parents would do without hesitating, all you could think about was the attention he wasn't paying you. As to evil horned girls? My sister here is their Queen. My late sister was also their queen. She once tried to chop me in half to keep a secret that ended up being revealed less than a week later. She was also prone to groping me. And Mother? _I still liked her better than I like you_. If anyone else cares whether or not you simply disappear, I am not among them."

The tears in the bitter woman's voice might have been real, and they might have been forced. But as said, Mayu simply did not care any longer.

"What are you saying to me?"

Mayu shrugged.

"I'd tell you to go to Hell. But you're already there, aren't you? I hope, when you reach the real Hell, you find Stepfather once again, and that you both learn what it is to 'open up'."

"How-how can you be this cold?"

Mayu said one last thing before hanging up.

"It's like the old song-when it comes to hate, you've got to be carefully taught. I learned it all from you, Mother. So Thank You."

When Mayu turned around, Kenjiro was waiting.

"Father?"

Kenjiro looked at the phone.

"I had hoped she'd change. But she simply became more like herself. You did the right thing, Mayu-chan. I'm glad you had the chance to tell her off."

Mayu took Kenjiro's hand, but did not pull her father close before returning to bed. Kenjiro knew why this was, but now hoped his former wife's daughter could change.

_3_

BURNING HOKKAIDO

At that same moment, a woman who had not been anything like a good mother was split in two, and the pieces tossed out an apartment window. The girl who had caused this looked around to others like her.

"Status?"

The oldest of the lot responded.

"No more Humans in this building at all, Antonia."

The one called Antonia turned to a girl holding the phone the dead woman had just used.

"Number?"

"The outgoing ID recorded it. It's a house in Kamakura. Could this other girl really be our queen?"

Antonia chuckled.

"Worth finding out, isn't it? I mean, if she is our queen, why is she living with Humans? Besides, there don't seem to be any of our kind in Kamakura. Time we changed that."

The oldest girl shook her head.

"Maybe not a good idea. Others I've talked with say that something really bad happened in Kamakura, and that it ought to be avoided. I don't know...aagggghhhhh!"

Half of the oldest girl's face was cut off, and then the cut went clear through that half of her head. Antonia looked around.

"Any other opinions?"

As the late second-in-command was tossed out the window as well, the others all stuck to a safe routine.

"No!"

"No!"

"No, Antonia."

"I've got nothing."

"It was real good that you done that, Antonia. Real good."

Antonia smiled.

"Let's all think positively, okay? Happy thoughts!"

_4_

MAPLE HOUSE

Anna Kakuzawa awoke from the sound of the phone ringing, and moved her right hand as though to slap an alarm clock. She knew her hand had hit something, but it felt odd.

"Did I cut myself?"

She got up to check, taking pains to avoid her unofficial 'alarm', a creaking floorboard that alerted her Agent friend (whom no one could quite bring themselves to call Bando-San just yet) whenever she got up. Turning on the light, she saw that she indeed had a gash.

"No. This can't be. Papa-why wouldn't you tell me?"

She also saw something that made her want to scream.

"Why? Is it all like this?"

The Agent would feel a need to report what she saw. Kurama was away, and Anna could not fully forgive his betrayal of her family, reasons aside. Since she had moved in, there had been one person who seemed to just instantly understand. Dressing quickly and shushing Wanta as she left, Anna sought out this person.

_5_

Inside the room now shared by Mayu, Nana, and their little half-sister Hana, Nana executed her own solution to letting the two older girls talk while letting their precious Imouto sleep.

"There. Hana-chan likes the feel of Nana's arms, and they will keep her from hearing us. Papa made the skin out of sound-absorbing material."

Nana's artificial arms rested on either side of Hana's ears. She asked Mayu her question, and got one answer.

"Nana is sorry your Mama is such a bad person. I'm glad she's not coming here. But is that all that's bothering you?"

Mayu looked down.

"I miss Kouta-San. Since Yuka-San and he argued, it's like they're both gone. It feels like we're always losing our family, and then we get them back...and then people start getting shot. Like Kouta-like poor Nyu."

Nana saw through some of this.

"But more like Kouta-San, right?"

Mayu closed her eyes.

"Doesn't stupid Yuka realize what she's risking? A really nice man like Kouta is so rare."

Nana said something telling as well.

"He is nice, isn't he? Yuka is confused, but she can't let herself stay that way forever. Someone else-might step in where she doesn't want to go. People who want something-won't wait forever, even for that special one."

The two looked at each other. Mayu broke the silence.

"You're talking about Nozomi-Chan, right?"

Nana gulped.

"Of course I am, silly. Aren't you?"

Mayu got a bit flustered.

"Well, I certainly wasn't talking about myself."

"Well, Nana certainly wasn't talking about herself."

"Good."

"Good."

A moment's silence was savagely ended by the exact same words spoken by both girls at the exact same time. These were among the legendary words that supposedly, once spoken, can never be taken back.

"Because you'd be completely wrong for him."

Both girls stared, and each became absolutely desperate to change the subject. Nana grasped at straws and found some words.

"Say-did something else happen recently?"

Grateful to have that awkward moment shut down, Mayu gave in to the new question as she lay back down.

"I-I had an argument with Mister Bando, down on the beach."

Mayu would realize she had failed to mention a few things, nearly leading to a dreaded 'Nana moment'.

"Mayu-Chan?"

"Yes, Nana-Chan?"

"Mister Bando is dead."

Mayu thought hard about ways to avoid the details of this conversation. She had only an hour before she had to get back up and start breakfast. Finally, it came to her.

"He Got Better."

_6_

The woman sleeping in the room she shared with Nozomi was one who had first entered Maple House in the worst way imaginable. While it was a method she had defended and would defend again if called to, it was also one that was harder and harder to justify in a quiet house where the deep caring was evident. It reminded her of her Mom's small place in Hawaii, really just a lean-to with ambition, but full of life, and love, and as much food as the small woman could muster.

_*Papa didn't want to leave. But I didn't want him in jail. Papa loves us. He'd just rather lose the lower half of his body than admit it outright.*_

"Mama, you always knew."

Papa still couldn't return to Mama, or so much as glance at Hawaiian soil. While both father and daughter had the means to bring her over now, the choice of the still-quiet island chain versus ground zero of the Diclonius conflict was a no-brainer. But Papa kept to his beach, his never-ceasing battle to clean it now a tribute to Mayu-chan, 'until those asswipes give me something real to do'. So the woman who had grown up finding out that even like-minded interested girls had the same aversion as boys to a girl who was simply too damned tall (not to mention too blonde for her Asian features) found herself alone as always - and she hated it no less.

"Where are you, Nozomi?"

If second-generation Agent Bando had known a girl with a voice like Nozomi's had been inside Maple House - well, she still would have had a duty to perform, and that was bringing Lucy and Kakuzawa together so both could be finished off in one strike. But she would have regretted it just a bit more.

Nozomi entered their room silently, a thermos of tea in her hands, though the look on her face suggested she could use some harder stuff.

"Things go badly with your Pop?"

Nozomi broke up a large cracker, poured some tea in a cup and offered both to her roommate.

"You could say that."

Tears were evident, ones both visible and barely kept back.

"You know-I know you love him, and wish to be an obedient grateful girl, but one of these days you should just let him know in no uncertain terms that his ways of protecting you stink, stank, stunk."

Nozomi nodded.

"I did let him know that."

She looked down.

"Why do you think I'm crying?"

Nozomi cocked an ear to catch a noise, but it passed. The Agent shrugged before speaking.

"Just all of a sudden, you let him have it? I was kind of talking about a long-term build up."

Nozomi shook her head.

"We all have pain. Burdens we must endure, and that's all there is. But what if-what if that pain, that defining pain of your entire life, was for no reason at all? What then? What-you better check on Anna-Chan."

The Agent sighed.

"Why do you have better hearing than a trained operative?"

Gun raised, hand near the safety, the Agent slid back her bedroom door, and winced when she saw Anna's was already open. Happily, there was a note.

_*Please understand. I've gone to see Kouta-San*_

The Agent shook her head.

"Am I the only one in this house without a crush on this guy?"

Nozomi thought that one over.

"Kenjiro-San?"

Agent shook her head.

"Man-Crush, for how Kouta protected Mayu-Chan. Mom-Crush on Arika-San's part, for Nana-chan. Youth-crush on Kurama's part, seeing the man he could have been if not for Anna's sick family. Arakawa just blushes every time he's mentioned-did something happen between those two? Nope-I'm the only one, and I really don't get it."

Nozomi pointed out the obvious.

"Should you?"

Agent checked Anna's room for any signs of abduction or struggle, and to her relief found none.

"Inclination is one thing. I just can't see why so many girls fall for him. Nice guy, but beyond the rudiments-"

She got up from her inspection.

"I mean, take the monster-pardon the truth-telling-who had the government of Japan shaking in its boots shook in her boots at the mere thought of this guy. Armies fell at her feet - jet-fighters? But who finally kills her? The guy she spent all of one really nice day with ten years ago. And she asked him to."

Nozomi had no answer for this.

"Do you want company while you fetch her back?"

The Agent made something clear that had already been indicated.

"Yeah-if that company is you."

Nozomi wondered how many layers of feelings her new friend had for her. She wondered also what would happen when she could not return them entirely.

_7_

As they went out, Arakawa rose and waited till they were out of the main yard.

"Gotcha! Now, don't struggle. Just make it easy on yourself."

Taking her prize inside her room, she checked the secured channel her vaccine computer simulations were kept on, and saw the formula remained stable.

"My work is done-and now for you!"

She pulled out a soup-bone from the butcher's shop, and handed it to Wanta.

"Mayu-chan says that you're not her property, but her friend. Will you be my friend?"

With toys and treats in hand, a girl who had wanted a dog but couldn't have one, now a woman, delighted in the licks and pokes of the smallest resident of Maple House. That is, until someone opened the door.

"Onee-Chans! The Mad Doctor-Lady is hogging Wanta-Chan again!"

'The Mad Doctor-Lady' glared at little Hana.

"Just throw Arakawa under the bus-or make me live under a bridge, why don't you?"

Hana shook her little head.

"You're a very weird lady, you know that?"

_8_

Some miles away, Emiko awoke her daughter, Yuka, to have some things out once and for all.

"How long are you planning on staying here?"

Yuka gulped and shook her head.

"Till he comes here and apologizes. Not before."

Emiko rolled her eyes.

"He told you he loved you - and then you slapped him for it."

Yuka tried to form words that would deflect this logic, but her mother was not Kouta, easily flustered by sometimes-off-kilter assertions.

"It was too soon. He was being disrespectful of poor Nyu. She died to save him."

Yuka kept on forgetting who she was dealing with, as her mother proved by bypassing Nyu.

"Nyu was a lot of things. But whether she was a complete monster or just a sweet kid who fell into a mindset of violence, she is also one thing more : Dead. You told me she gave you charge of taking care of Kouta, right?"

Before she left their invaded home for what would prove to be the final time, Lucy/Nyu had indeed said just that.

"Yes."

"Then it's time to take care of him, Yuka. Time-Hell, it's time you both cleared the tension in the air. Nozomi's already a looker, Nana's a little hottie, and Mayu will be moving into her own fairly soon, even if she does resent living in what she calls 'The Oppai-Sou' sometimes. Before any of them decide to take advantage of your hesitancy and frankly, your bitchiness-"

"MOTHER!"

Emiko placed her hands on her child's shoulders, blocking any attempt to walk away. She said it plainly as it could possibly be said.

"You need to get laid, Yuka. You specifically need Kouta to perform that special service a man's face gives to a woman's nether regions. In fact, of all those special things, you need that one special service more badly than any Japanese woman in history!"

Yuka immediately blushed a deeper shade of red than her mother had ever seen.

"But-but-but-but-"

Emiko kept seizing the opening.

"Yeah, he can do that, too-though after, you may find it hard to walk for a few days."

Yuka started to show her anger.

"Mother, you know I've been saving myself."

Emiko was several steps ahead of her the whole way.

"Yes, I know-but HE'S the one you've been saving yourself for. Now, he's truly back, he's confessed his love, and though even I'm a little sad for it, the only real rival for his hand is gone, and she is NEVER coming back."

At that, Yuka simply burst out crying.

"Nyu...Ohhhh...Nyu!"

Emiko realized anew that to her charges, except Nana, Lucy The Killer had never been part of their lives. The one they loved, and the one they missed, was the silly-stupid boob-groping girl who made their whole lives a game of spin the bottle-with them as the bottle. Yuka looked up and stopped crying.

"Mother? What if...what if there was a secret that might make Kouta very angry with me?"

Emiko saw progress here, and moved on it.

"Well, first I'd say that everyone who's ever lived has those kinds of secrets. Then next-I'd say that, if you think this secret must be revealed and will affect Kouta-Kun-then you should not be discussing it with your mother. Hurry, girl-he's waiting there for you-errr, wherever it is he is."

Yuka closed her eyes.

"But what if he rejects my advances?"

"Yuka-Chan?"

"Yes, Mother?"

Emiko kissed her girl on the forehead, and sent her off with a whack on the behind, to go and become a woman.

"I'll let you in on an ancient secret - young men in their early twenties don't turn down offers of sex. Now out!"

Yuka had been pushed out at last, and knew to seek Kouta at the university. She would obey her mother's orders, but she would take the long way there.

"God, Nyu...what do I tell him?"

_9_

As she pondered this and began her walk, Emiko heard a knock on her door.

"Girl-you had better be asking for cab fare or-"

But it was not Yuka. Instead, it was a man Emiko had come to know-and dislike intensely-while both their families were recovering from the invasion of Maple House.

"Haruto-San. I'm afraid neither Yuka nor Nozomi-chan are here. Now, if you'll excuse me-"

But the man who kept her from closing the door was not bellowing about the 'frat party she had sponsored' while his daughter Nozomi lay in a hospital bed.

"Please, Emiko-Sama. I need your help. Nozomi-chan has spurned me!"

He looked broken and close to tears. The last time Emiko had helped such a man, it was Kouta's father Junichiro. For Emiko had a secret of her own. Her weakness for such men was deep and profound, and very nearly something she couldn't control.

"Come in out of the morning cold, Haruto-San. I'll make tea."

_10_

On an aircraft carrier off the coast, sailors checked radar specially linked with the largely-inoperable Vector Attack Crafts, scanning for Diclonius, and for the moment, happily finding none. On this vessel, Doctor Daisuke Kurama sat and met with the most powerful man he had ever dealt with. If the press (and many who knew the man, even those who liked him) were to be believed, it was he and not his nominal superior who guided the Executive Branch of the American government.

"You have my personal assurances, Doctor Kurama. I would think that would be more than enough."

Kurama knew better than to risk offense. But there was one for whom all risks were by definition worth it.

"Mister Vice-President, she is a vital resource in this war. Maybe our only true resource. More, she is precious to me. The one verifiably good result of my time in the darkness."

"I have daughters myself, Doctor. But the man on top wants a meeting with her. In the meantime, we can get your vaccine into an area clear of Diclonius, a corporate biotech factory campus in Northern New Jersey. For some reason, these births have been much rarer near the coasts. In any event, the place is easily secured against all types of attacks. Even the ones you've described."

Kurama knew that his government would not give up all the vaccine samples, and though brusque, the Vice-President was correct to take the vaccine where the enemy wasn't.

"How long has your country seen these births?"

Kurama was not an unenlightened man. But what the Vice-President revealed made him feel foolishly provincial.

"Since 1994. We didn't make the connection at the time to our soldiers serving in or visiting Japan. Of course, some births happened to people wholly outside the military. When we found a likely Asian connection, well, Japan wasn't on our minds as the primary origin source."

Kurama thought of a horrible joke, which his mind sadly knew to be the gospel truth.

_*To a young angry Lucy, all Humans must have looked alike.*_

Kurama early on had been barely able to talk to Lucy, demanding to know where she had traveled to in her five years, and being told that she had largely stayed in and around Kamakura. Soon all communication shut down, but Kurama had been satisfied she had been telling the truth.

"So we never had control of this outbreak because such control is impossible."

In his mind, he saw them all. American soldiers, tourists and businesspeople. Europeans from all over the continent and the island nations. South Koreans of every type. Spies of every stripe. All visiting that lovely seaside treasure, Kamakura. So quaint. All of the men in these groups never or barely noticing an odd girl with pinkish hair and a pullover cap. Many of these men sitting hospitals over the intervening months and years wondering why their new babies looked so strange. A man named Kurama, using various methods to put such children down within Kamakura, so certain that the odd outbreak outside the area could be caught and contained. But now that area was the whole of the Earth.

"Yet there would have been fewer of them, outside of Japan. Sir, when did your government develop a coordinated effort to control these children?"

The Vice-President, one of the oldest men to serve in this position, showed he had an excellent memory.

"Two years ago."

Kurama felt kicked in the teeth.

"Two years? It took that long?"

A man frustrated by slowness and what he saw as too much deliberation, the Vice-President simply nodded.

"It was only five years ago we even confirmed these births were happening. Up until then, they'd been like urban legends. Understandably, many of the families of these girls wanted the whole thing kept quiet. Wanted to give their kids as normal a life as possible. The Marines who had these births had a very unofficial network for making adoption records for kids who were only five but looked and acted ten. Their main concern was the rapid aging."

Kurama was now badly confused.

"What about these girls attacking their families?"

This time, the Vice-President pulled out a file.

"Except in cases of verified extreme abuse-there really haven't been any instances of that recorded, until the troubles in the Midwest. One such girl became the guardian of her mother's mixed brood-some horned, some not. But fiercely protective of all her siblings. Told the mother to clean up her act, and she did."

Kurama saw two possibilities. One, was a culture difference that he could at this point not define, and doubted as being the full answer. The other seemed more likely, especially if other countries turned out to be as lucky as America now seemed on the surface.

"Perhaps physical distance from Lucy lessens the drive to kill Humans?"

Whatever flaws the American might have had, he knew enough to leave scientists' work to scientists, and concentrated on something more concrete.

"Doctor, as far as I and the President are concerned, Japan is our ally, to be aided and protected in its time of need. But I can tell you right now, everybody back home, Republican and Democrat, is going to want to know why you kept this quiet for so long, if it presented a threat. Now, I have not gotten a straight or satisfactory answer on this from your government. Do you have an answer that I can sell to all those concerned?"

Kurama fell briefly into a defensive mode.

"I suppose I could simply say that, since this threat began here, we wished to handle and contain it ourselves. Ally does not mean slave, nor does it mean master."

Regaining his sense of the dire situation on several levels, Kurama held up a hand in the air before the Vice-President could respond.

"But I suppose that is what you've already heard from my government. Sir, national pride did play a role. In any crisis, we would fight for our own defense, but the limits of the law and the real world mean we would need our allies, if say, the late North Koreans had ever finally attacked. Such a neediness offends a proud people. But there was more. For a while, each time the Diclonius situation would deepen, the ruling parties would increasingly turn to Hideki Kakuzawa. At some point, someone finally realized that perhaps the Chief wasn't as effective at controlling this outbreak as they had hoped. Since his competence or effectiveness at getting things done was never in question, his motives were all that were left to decipher."

The Vice-President checked his briefing papers.

"Much of the equipment we brought into Iraq and Afghanistan was from the Kakuzawa Zaibatsu. Top-tier stuff, so I'm told, and usually very reasonable, as these things go. There was almost nowhere on Earth he couldn't go and expect to be welcomed The Big Man was obviously playing a long game, foregoing much larger profits for indispensability and access."

Kurama concurred and raised the stakes as well.

"The Big Man-The Chief-wished to become God, Mister Vice-President. Not to seek God's favor, or claim that he already had it, or even start a cult with him as its head. He was looking to restart the world itself, with his son as Adam and Lucy as Eve."

The Vice-President almost laughed at this.

"I'm a fairly religious man, Kurama. And even I know that two people can't pull it off. Unless he had other couples lined up somewhere?"

Kurama shook his head.

"We have scoured and seized any facilities that had the vaguest connection with the Kakuzawas, and investigated others where they had done business. Besides that lack of evidence, consider his goal - if teams of Adams and Eves dot Japan or the globe, then he cannot be father to all of them. Lucy's mother was the key, and she only produced two children. Both of those are dead. So that part of the scheme is dead. But to resume my point, by the time Japan truly realized it had treated with a madman, it was too far in to simply pull him out without first finding out what he was up to-and perhaps gaining a new weapons technology. I find that foolish in any event, and repulsive especially since it was the genetic material of my own poor daughter that was used to fuel this boondoggle. You want an answer as to why we were silent, sir? Because silence on some matters is a Japanese flaw. Overreach was a North Korean flaw, one they did not survive. Chinese methods seem to be failing them, and with all respect, the troubles in your land seem to be arising from one of your great political conflicts. In all nations, the follies we have known are becoming, with the aid of these births, the follies that may well sink us."

The Vice-President bristled, but not at Kurama.

"I called everyone I knew in Congress. Told them the President would never support euthanizing if it weren't vital to our nation's survival. Nobody on our team likes it, dammit - Hell, no one on the other side who supports the practice it actually likes it per se, horns or no. But they all went to their damned town hall meetings and denounced us - US! - as traitors. Well, I guess they'll all get re-elected next November - if there is a next November. I was Pro-Life when it wasn't popular to be that, even in the Mountain States. But let them denounce, while they birth and build an army the enemy regularly raids for new recruits. Once the population drops enough-we'll see some redistricting in the worst way."

The older man caught himself and looked at Kurama.

"We're a warts and all society, Doctor. You want folly and flaws? We got 'em by the truckload. I said before that a lot of these girls were integrated and living well back home. But some of them obviously caught some of the same kind of flack as this - Lucille was her name? They're the ones grabbing the newborns, and they are awfully good at hiding, and their dupes aren't some bleeding hearts on the other side, but the virtuous on mine. I didn't see this as part of the second term. But back to business - will you and she visit the White House?"

Kurama agreed to this, but asked a last question.

"What will you do when other countries demand Japan on a platter for our involvement in this crisis?"

The Vice-President smiled.

"When that time comes, I might have a suggestion as to what they can do with themselves. Just make sure your daughter's not in earshot when I do."

But five seconds later, the American was using that very kind of language as a message came through.

"A concern, sir?"

The Vice-President looked at Kurama.

"UBL - Public Enemy Number One - is dead on the Pakistani border. His own people did it - and now their focus is exclusively on these horned girls-or any pregnant women. My God, don't they realize what they're doing? They're erasing their future!"

Another message came through, and more colorful invective followed.

"No wonder he sent me here-the President is withdrawing troops from-basically the entire Middle East. Wants them back home before this Diclonius thing blows up. DAMMIT! He made me his second so he could avoid making dumbass decisions like that."

_11_

Kurama quietly excused himself as news of most Arab states suddenly treating with Israel came through as well. Good things were happening in the world, but for the worst reason imaginable. Kurama for his part called Nana at Maple House and told her to be ready - or at least he tried.

"Yes-yes, Hana-I know Doctor Arakawa is a bit strange. No-I do not wish to talk with Wanta right now. Just-just put your older sister on-Nana? Mayu-Chan? Wrong-wrong sister. Things are that bad in Hokkaido? Mayu-Chan, put Nana on-but then use the house cell phone to call my friend, the General, and tell him about that phone call. Yes-Nana? It's Papa. Yes-yes I still want to speak to you. Can you get ready in a hurry? No-No, not for our wedding-and you say you've moved on anyway? To HIM? I think that Yuka-Chan might have something to say...just pack some things and be ready. Is Agent Bando there? She and Nozomi-Chan are pursuing Anna? Nana, I will be there soon enough. Try and find out about where Anna is and also try and get with Kouta-San-no, not in that way. It doesn't matter if you think you can take Yuka in a fight. Nana? I think you dropped the receiver-"

A yelping noise was heard as the receiver hit the floor at Maple House. Kurama shook his head.

"Take care of her till I get back, Wanta. You may be the only sane one in that house."

_12_

At the university, a Kouta who hadn't slept much pored over Arakawa's notebook of false and misleading statements from Chief Kakuzawa.

_*For such a wicked man, he surely knew his Bible quotes.* _

But at the door to the basement lab, Kouta saw the last visitor he could have reasonably expected.

"Anna-Chan?"

Anna's right hand was bandaged, but no blood was apparent on it.

"Kouta-San, please. You have to aid me. I'm scared!"

His natural tendency to aid a young girl aside, Kouta now knew this newcomer as long-lost family, a fact his Auntie Emiko had confirmed, along with the surprising news that both she and Kouta's mother had been born with the Kakuzawa family marker - small vestigial horns they had hid their entire lives, so as not to be sucked into the madness Kouta and Yuka's great-grandmother fled when she had not been born with horns. Kouta now had an odd feeling he did not like, and it would take his best friend to clear this up.

"Let's see your hand, Anna. How bad can it be? No!"

The unwrapped hand showed signs of scrapes, but no blood. That was because the circuitry and wires Kouta saw needed no blood to operate. Anna was crying.

"What did Papa do to Anna? Kouta-San? Is Anna just a machine?"

Kouta placed a calming hand on her head, and now blessed the revived memories that had tormented him since he realized who Nyu really was. He even recalled his last mercy to his friend. Yuka at the carnival. Nyu at the zoo, in that brief tender time. Kanae, that first summer night at Auntie's, feeling neglected. Mayu, just moved in, crying that she heard a noise at the door. He later realized that she feared it was her stepfather, when in fact, it had been Wanta, completing the most wonderful night of her life. It was only after poor Nyu was gone that Nana told about the final hours of Kurama-San's poor daughter, the girl those madmen had cloned and used in the attack on their home. But he saw Nana's hurt when she came back that night, and when the shattered girl rose for a midnight snack, someone was waiting with the pot-scrapings of the delicious Soumen, a peace-making gesture that went a long way. So it had been for Anna and a late-brewed cup of hot chocolate, when he had found her sobbing while holding Wanta, her first night at Maple House.

_*I may not be the protector I want to be, but I can stand with those I care for. They will always have whatever I can give.*_

"Easy, Anna-Chan. You loved your father, but he had plans for the world. Those plans made him see things in the wrong way. Even with his love for you."

In reality, Kouta's opinion of the late Chief Kakuzawa could not have lower, and his repulsion at being even distantly related to him could not have been greater. As Kurama had related, the tale of what happened to Nyu's faithful questing mother at the Chief's hands made him feel as though the blood-debt in their families flowed both ways (though he could almost hear both Nyu and Lucy telling him this was not so). Yet for Anna's sake, he would not properly and openly condemn the man who set the world to war.

"Anna-Chan? You know what I have to do now, right?"

He took out a scalpel as she nodded nervously, and made a scrape on her left arm. The red trickle that followed made the girl smile.

"Kouta-San, it's my blood!"

After the gauze was placed on the small cut, Anna rushed forward and embraced Kouta. He didn't blush, but he was surprised, both by the gesture, and by her following words.

"Kouta-San is both a better Papa and a better brother than I have known! But Anna would like it if he were something more. Anna loves Kouta-San, and wishes to be his wife!"

The excitement, the strain, the stress and the relief all combined to quickly put the girl out like a light. Kouta placed her on his own cot, covered her, but also began to examine her uncovered right arm. Gently, he scraped it with the cleaned scalpel as well.

"What the hell is going on here?"

Kouta didn't even bother to turn at first.

"Hmm. With a situation like this, I was expecting Yuka."

He fought off a sigh as the gun cocked. The Agent repeated herself while Nozomi's eyes went wide.

"What the hell is going on here?"

Kouta rose silently, slowly pushed the gun away, a glare on his face as he pointed at Anna's artificial arm. The workings were more sophisticated than on the hand, but still obviously cybernetic.

"See for yourself!"

_13_

Haruto began to relate why he had come to see Emiko.

"Nozomi told me she had related our difficulties to you."

Emiko moved to cut off what she saw as a potential problem.

"I asked her not to. I reminded her this was a matter of your family, and it's private concerns."

But while there were problems aplenty, Haruto was not concerned about privacy.

"Thank You for that. But I am actually glad someone knows."

He shook his head mournfully.

"Had outsiders been involved sooner, my loving, obedient child might not now hate me."

The man's bluster from the hospital had passed, as though it had never been, though Emiko had always written off part of that as the concerns of a worried father.

"I think I know Nozomi-Chan well enough to say that can't be the case. Besides, what could possibly be so bad?"

Haruto breathed in.

"You know how my wife died?"

Emiko tried again to steer this out of intimate territory.

"I know that she lost her beautiful singing voice, and her ability to speak, and that...she couldn't bear the loss."

Yet when one agrees to hear an unburdening, one does not necessarily get to choose where that process begins and ends. Emiko always knew this, but learned it here once again.

"Yes, that is what happened to her. Rather, that is the start of what happened to her. What I knew of, anyway."

Emiko let the man keep on. At this point, any more attempts to limit the conversation would have been rude.

"Now, there is no 'real truth' of it. No hidden layers, if by that you mean someone kept something from me. But still there was more to it. At my Nomi's funeral, I talked to one of her friends from the theater ensemble she sang with, a master of scenery and effects named Akio. He had learned recently that his-partner-had tested positively for HIV, and I saw in his potential loss someone I could talk to. The doctors as always tell nothing to family members, so I turned to him for what I could on why my wife's voice had left her. Her despair I very nearly understood, for now it was my own. It was the loss that drove her that confused me. He was a good man, who looked strong despite certain stereotypes, but he was squeamish about how Nomi, who he described as an 'operatic Karen Carpenter', lost it all so rapidly. He finally shrugged, and told me that :

_* Well, you know how it is with Soprano Dramatico. The singers, with their gift from God, push things and push things until the gift leaves them, and those who felt blessed and highly placed then feel damned and disregarded. It's like their golden throats have this flaw - most Japanese simply aren't made for Western-style opera - this wondrous quirk that produces such heart-raising music. But like a carefully-placed castle of playing cards, it collapses, and then there is only empty air.*_

and that for many years was all I knew of my wife's illness. Yet if I had the strength to hear more, to ask Akio what he meant by all that - so much would have been averted. So very much."

Emiko freshened the tea, and answered a phone call about a late-arrived contractor at one of her properties. By the time she'd made this right, Haruto was again ready to speak.

"Nozomi was all I had left, precious unto herself, and precious for her mother's memory. I vowed to do everything I had to protect her from utilizing this deceitful gift, this 'Soprano Dramatico'. I -"

He stopped and looked at Emiko. He read her face.

"You already know, don't you?"

Emiko had to answer honestly.

"I once trained to be a medical aide, before the family's properties became my sole responsibility."

But she bid Haruto keep on. The words needed to be said, even if some of the suspense was lost.

"My little heart asked me why she couldn't listen to her Mama's records. She didn't ask it defiantly. But my heart was filled with so many bad things. Rage, at everyone from God to Nomi herself. Anger, that hearing her beautiful voice again would re-ignite that rage, which was harder to fight down each time. Fear, that this was the moment I would look back upon and tell myself that I could have saved Nozomi from her thorned rose of a talent, and failed to act."

Each painful pause was making Emiko, someone very strong in dealing with her own pain, wither somewhat more inside.

"So I treated her respectful confusion and tender question not as that, but as though she'd had a younger sibling and joyfully drowned it in the bathtub. I pounded her little backside with all intent of hurting her, channeling High Holy Hell through my spanking hands. I told myself that this was the time to bring that lesson home, for even if Nozomi somehow grew into a hellion, I doubted I could ever bring myself to strike her ever again, for anything. But even in that arguable mindset, I now realize that I lost myself."

He gulped down some tea.

"For all this I apologize for burdening you. But I am too weak to not speak now. For this part, especially. Confused and in pain, Nozomi tried to get away. So I pulled down her pants, bound her hands and kept spanking her ever harder until she peed-and this made me even angrier. If someone had found me and thought me a perverted fetishist at that point-who could blame them?"

A small blanket around the shoulders of a man who was now shivering was not unappreciated as he resumed.

"As I meant her to, she never forgot that-sad moment-and for the most part needed only minor urging to keep away from continuing the dream that had eaten her mother alive. Did she mention to you problems with our family members?"

Emiko was glad to speak again, simply so as not to feel immersed in this man's tragedy for a moment.

"She did, and I will say this, Haruto-San - you should have been more careful with handing over your authority. Whatever you said to them, other members of your family seemed to take away that they had the exact same rights as you when it came to disciplining Nozomi."

Emiko had been a gracious, empathetic host and had only castigated him on this one area, where he knew his position was weak anyway. So he let her criticism be the final word on it.

"Hai. The one time she ever showed that she was trying to get around my restrictions was when she made me a recording of her own singing. I did not attack her again, but I showed my rage and smashed the cassette. I taped it back together later, but now we two were in the worst place possible. I saw how weak and meek and compliant she had become, but how could I complain? This was how I taught her to be, I realized, even enduring my child's tears to make it so. So ever more foolish, I began to despise this bladder-challenged construct I'd made, and then I would despise myself for hypocrisy, and then remind myself again that it was for her own good-and the cycle would not stop-until she met Yuka-chan."

He smiled.

"I was so glad when your daughter became her sempai. I thought, surely this strong determined girl, whose only goals were a fine college and an unnamed man she loved, could guide Nozomi back to strength, maybe by finding a new dream. You should be proud of your girl, Emiko-Sama."

Emiko nodded.

"Sama's a bit much. San is fine, the past aside. But as for Yuka? You should never have expected her to tell Nozomi to yield up her dreams. Believe me, I spent a lot of her childhood trying to get her to move on from Kouta."

Haruto wiped his brow, and tried to hide wiping his eyes as well.

"Yet both her initial association with Yuka-chan and then her association with your Maple House finally chased off the mouse I had pounded her into, and gave her the strength to stand up to me. I was relieved when she did. I decided that, I could watch her be hurt, but I couldn't bear to watch her be always afraid. I gave her my blessing, and all seemed well."

His slight happiness faded.

"I learned that Akio's partner had recently passed, and that he himself only had so much longer. He had been kind to me at a bad time. I could do no less than to wish him my best, for how much that was worth. It brought him pleasure to remember his time with Nomi, and he asked about Nozomi as well. When I told him that I had resigned myself to the risk of losing her to this 'Soprano Dramatico', he said words that tore my heart out. It was not his fault. But after he told me his news, I briefly thought about joining my dear wife. For no father not of ill intent or ill mind had ever so wronged his child, while believing he had done so rightly."

His look pleaded with Emiko to say it for him, with what her medical background had already told her. She obliged.

"There is no such disease or throat flaw as Soprano Dramatico. Japanese possess no sort of genetic limit preventing us from singing anything we wish, ability aside. A genius diva like Kumiko Noma proves that."

Haruto put down his tea.

"Akio explained that, previously, he had spoken to me in euphemistic terms about Nomi's off-stage behavior. She was under such pressure to always perform at her very best. To relieve that pressure, she smoked-and she drank. She would be out in cold weather not dressed properly. She was never a drunk in that way, but as far as her delicate throat was concerned, she may as well have been gargling razor blades. Soprano Dramatico was simply what her local peer group called the foolish indulgences that can cost any singer their voice, if they pay it no heed. She even used harsher-than-normal mouthwashes, so that Nozomi and I would never taste what she was doing. I wonder now if mere throat muscle failure was what took her gift, and not some form of cancerous growth she refused to tell me about. Again, I don't blame Akio. He was a man soon to grieve the one he loved, aiding one who had already seen that grief, and walking on eggshells about what he thought I surely already knew. Yet I knew nothing."

He raised his hand as though to spank someone, but let it fall to his leg.

"I knew that I had gone too far, but I told myself, better too far than not far enough. I told myself, better Nozomi's confidence be crippled and then slowly rebuilt than I should relent and see her die of dark despair someday. Nozomi has accepted that my actions, while extreme, were born out of love and a determination to protect her from that mine-field of a gift. But then I learned that there was nothing to protect her from, save habits a teetotaler like herself will likely never develop. Emiko-San, I could tell my daughter that Papa was too rough in protecting her out of love and knowledge she did not have. How, though, to deal with her anger and rage to learn that her nightmares and ruined bladder need never have started to begin with?"

Emiko tried to sort through what she was told.

"Kurama said that Nozomi had a throat flaw that had been fixed somehow by Nyu's passing."

Haruto nodded.

"He lied at my behest. I asked him of her health, and he said that the damage from the thuggish soldier's choke-hold was gone. I told him what I've told you, and Kurama-San agreed to protect my shame until I could bear to tell Nozomi the truth. He said that, having failed his own children, he could not condemn me."

Emiko's thoughts became a trifle bitter.

_*Even when you try to help, Kurama, you end up causing trouble.*_

"But Haruto-San? Nozomi knows now?"

He paused, asked for some more tea, then continued.

"She does. My daughter came to visit me, in the company of those two young girls, one of them with blue hair, Kurama-San's adopted daughter. With them was a sweet child they called their half-sister-to both of them at the same time?"

"That's little Hana-long story."

"Yes. I guessed as much. My Nozomi delighted in having them listen to recordings of my wife, and showing them pictures of her. One of those pictures showed Nomi with Akio. As it turns out, he was the older cousin to the little girl, Hana, and Nozomi was sad to hear that he had passed. Politely but firmly, she asked me why I hadn't mentioned this. I now saw the small child's coincidental arrival as fate telling me to reveal my costly mistake at last. I felt as though my Nomi and perhaps even Akio himself were urging that the truth be told. Was this foolish? I have never been one to look for such signs."

Emiko shrugged.

"Sometimes, Haruto-San, a cigar is only a cigar. Still, the coincidence is staggering. And-the truth had to be told."

A thought to which Haruto offered no direct counter.

"Yet this hard truth has not set either of us free. Far better that it come from me than she should somehow find out separately. But her words-her eyes-her lovely face, contorted in-in hatred. It's just like that old French story about the necklace - a simple inquiry could have averted so much."

Emiko again offered what she had.

"It may be inappropriate, but I heard a joke. A child comes to kill their father. They are instantly declared an ungrateful monster, but the child explains that the father has earned this fate. The father of course asks how this could be. The child tells of how the father craved a pizza from a shop in the deepest darkest pits of Hell, and sent his child to get it. The father responded that this was the duty of an obedient child, and that they should not complain. The child countered that they had no complaint of enduring all of Hell twice over to get the pizza - their complaint was, that, when they got to the shop, they found it had been closed for many years."

Haruto almost seemed to smile at the grim humor, but stopped.

"The father in your joke would have no way to call Hell and learn of the shop's closure. My idiocy could have been solved by going to the library, or using the internet. Talking to a doctor, or even a former medical aide like yourself, would also have resolved this whole sorry matter."

Emiko was now too invested in this to just let the matter drop.

"To be frank, Haruto-San, it is as you fear. You wronged your daughter. I think some of this resentment may have ultimately come up even if this fictional flaw were real. You scared the shit out of her at a very impressionable age, pounded her backside and humiliated her over what wasn't even remotely defiance. You moved to create a weakling, then had the nerve to resent that girl for being as you had made her. Again, all things you know, and I think that, in time, she would call you on, however politely. But she has always known her father loved her, and when you two reconciled, she learned that you were fanatically determined to protect her from her own body's weaknesses, and some that pain, shame and fear went away."

Emiko saw her guest fading out.

"Now, she has learned that all she endured had no cause. While she is being unfair to you, think of what she is dealing with. Not merely the excessive one-time discipline and then the stark mishandling that _every parent who has ever lived_ has had to face down in themselves. No. She is dealing with a thought many parents strive to never let their kids have, foolish though it may be. The terrible, awful thought that Mama or Papa can be just dead wrong. Yuka has known this for years. If you ever have the time, ask her about when I forbid her to even mention Kouta's name ever again..."

But now Haruto had fallen asleep in his chair. Emiko put his feet up on an ottoman, and whispered to herself.

"Be strong, Emi. That the man has needs doesn't mean what he needs is you."

Heading into the kitchen, she started to prepare some food and hoped this would keep her from doing anything foolish.

It was a good idea in theory.

_14_

The Agent's device, usually meant to scan for hidden rooms in enemy strongholds, finally caught hold of the right frequency.

"That bastard. That utter bastard. I knew he had a control in her. But now it's deactivated."

Kouta said it plainly.

"A bomb?"

Agent Bando continued to scan Anna's artificial arm for any more surprises.

"Deviously made. Outer layers make most scans give a false positive of organic material. The arm's entire structure was made to give the bomb a high yield - enough to kill a 'goddess' from within, if her father so desired. But why cut off her entire arm?"

Kouta checked the scan.

"Yeah. The hand would have been enough to take down Anna-chan's monstrous form. Wait-I think Arakawa-San's journal may have spoken of this."

While Kouta checked through the voluminous notes the nervous scientist had made, Agent Bando cornered Nozomi.

"He'll be a few minutes. Now give with your father. What happened?"

Nozomi turned away in a huff.

"If I had wanted to tell you everything, I would have told you everything at the start."

Agent Bando, unsurprisingly, would not relent.

"If you didn't want to tell me everything, you should have told me nothing. You shouldn't even have told me that there was anything to tell. I am a spy, after all."

Nozomi glared ever harder, but the Agent took it in stride.

"Yeah, I'm a bitch, Daddy's little big girl. Now give."

So Nozomi did just that, relating to her roommate what Haruto had to Emiko.

"I tried to be strong, this time. I tried to be understanding. But my understanding was gone. Erased entirely. I-I called my Papa a stupid old man. I reminded him that one day, he might be helpless under my care, and that he should dread that time, when I remember, and I have the power to make one regret my rages."

Kouta had finished with Arakawa's journal, and now seemed to be digging through another set of notes, so the Agent continued talking.

"Your Dad messed up, but he stopped short of apologizing - sounds like, anyway. You're still handling this."

Nozomi closed her eyes.

"I have many times feared Papa, and sometimes, I thought he was just being mean. But until this came out, I have never before hated him. I don't like hating him. And why would I? I have been dutiful and obedient-some have even called me meek and compliant-well before I knew about this supposed throat flaw. Papa had a will in things, and it was my duty to obey it as unspoken law. Why can't I do that now? Flaw or no flaw, he was still acting on my best behalf."

The Agent checked on Anna, still peacefully asleep, before responding.

"My Dad was rough on me in boot camp, but it served a purpose that has saved my ass on more than one occasion. What your Dad put you through made you weaker, in his eyes and in your own. I pity him for what he must be going through right now. But it's you I worry about. Dammit, girl. Don't forgive him until it really comes from the heart. Until you really feel that, you're not being obedient. You're being weak under the illusions of respect and obedience, because that forgiveness would be based on a lie. Haven't the two of you suffered enough from hidden truths, half-truths, euphemisms and profound misunderstandings?"

Nozomi managed a smile.

"A spy is arguing against half-truths?"

Agent Bando raised an eyebrow.

"Only when authorized. A spy deals in information. What you don't know can cost you. Even kill you. And it can sure as hell poison alliances."

Kouta called them both over to his work-desk, and gave what he had.

"The journal has Anna's father presenting Arakawa with some new genetic material to work into her weaponizing of the Diclonius virus, and he says :

_*This? This is the flesh and the blood and bone and sinew of my own faithful child, given up to remake the world, and thereby neutralize the Humans' best toy.*_

I believe he could only have meant Anna. Lucy's half-brother was too young to be either obedient or disobedient, and Professor Kakuzawa schemed against his father."

The Agent almost snorted.

"Blasphemy much, Kakuzawa-san? But why Anna's arm? He believed his whole family was of diluted Diclonius descent, and his daughter didn't even have horns."

Kouta showed once more that his brain had in fact picked up in speed and sharpness since regaining his memories.

"But she may have had something else. In recalling what Kurama said about the Professor trying to overthrow Chief Kakuzawa, I realized that he also may have made notes about any projects his father undertook-including about his little sister. Notes that he left in this very lab, and that Arakawa overlooked because they did not pertain to the vaccine research. The Professor was a scum - these notes on Anna tend towards the pornographic, imagining the body she will one day have. But I expected no better, and kept going through them until I found this :

_*Well, Imouto is not just a throwback, but a cockroach, it seems. If the damned fool Humans ever drop their mushroom-makers to try and stop us, Anna will shrug that off. Damn her. She possesses no other advantages in our evolutionary war, but she gets this plum one, almost literally an Nth Factor over the rest of the family's resistance. Father certainly knows this about her as well - the question is, what will he do with this information?* _

Well, that much I think we now know."

Nozomi was confused and said so.

"Was her brother saying that Anna-chan has a resistance to radiation?"

Agent Bando nodded.

"All the Kakuzawas did. That underground grotto they dug me and her out of? It used to be the family's ancestral hiding place. Loaded with radiation. Those that survived over the centuries and managed to have children gained resistance to radiation. But just as some family traits are weaker or stronger in some members, some few really get this or that gift. Like Anna."

Kouta completed the thought.

"This explains two things. One, Kakuzawa wanted her resistance to radiation to be part and parcel of the Diclonius his version of the virus would bring forward. Maybe he even did this in the hopes that the great powers would use nuclear weapons against the Diclonius, hurting us while making their job of wiping out Humans all the easier. This also explains why Anna was inside of that shell, rather than being the creature itself. The creature was - and I'll have to have Kurama and Arakawa check my theory on this - a tumor that grew out from Anna, that was given sentience by her mind. Her ability to metabolize so much hard radiation permitted this. How the morality to allow this could come from members of my own family sickens me."

The Agent waved her weapon.

"I shot you, and Kurama-San shot you. Please don't go shooting yourself, over a heritage you never chose, whose legacy you repudiated the moment you knew about it. The girls in our house think of you as a Papa, even Anna, who's known you for all of ten seconds. And you know what? They want you home. Not staying in this basement hell Anna's brother set up to deflower girls just out of high school."

Kouta was about to politely speak to the 'concerns' he had with Yuka, when Nozomi did something wholly unlike her, and was perhaps a sign of the conflict with her father.

"I am loyal to my Sempai. But if she is too gravely foolish or fearful to step up and claim a good man for her own, I can no longer be. I love you, Kouta-San, and if you need a wife you at least have a chance of figuring out, I wish to be that wife."

A familiar pattern in Kouta's life was starting to take an unfamiliar twist. Anna chose that moment to wake up.

"Nozomi-Chan! I have first claim on Kouta-San! I confessed hours before you did!"

Kouta, who had no idea of what to say, simply repeated that he had business with Yuka, and gave Anna assurances about her arm. The two would-be rivals for his hand departed the lab together, not hateful but now wary of each other. The Agent looked at Kouta.

"You coming back soon?"

Kouta nodded.

"Within the next day or so. I may have to keep the peace between those two. But I have to immediately talk to Kurama. He's talking to the Americans, and they have to be told that nuclear weapons will be useless against the Diclonius. Whether that's a good thing or not, I'm not sure."

Agent Bando removed her glasses and smiled at him.

"What about you and me hooking up, slugger?"

Kouta became badly confused.

"I thought you weren't into guys."

She put her glasses back on and moved to leave.

"I'm not. But I am intensely competitive, and I hate feeling left out of any contest."

Kouta laughed at the joke, realizing he would need a little laugh to counteract what he correctly foresaw would be a tense talk with Yuka.

_15_

Kurama took the phone call and did not spare the praise.

"Excellent work, Kouta. It makes sense the Chief would do something like this. It may be just what we need to keep atomic weapons out of this conflict entirely."

Hanging up, Kurama wondered what other surprises his former boss had layered in the genetic makeup of the girls he helped create. Surprisingly, Chinese Intelligence had offered up whatever it could find, but there were no reports yet, owing to the damage the Diclonius there were causing and the refugee crisis that could only get worse.

"Doctor Kurama?"

It was a younger American, though already a full Colonel.

"Yes, Colonel?"

"I was told to keep you briefed, sir. But there are several things to tell you, and this news must not travel."

Kurama nodded.

"Understood, Colonel. But I hope that some of it is at least good news."

The man nodded.

"One thing is good news, Doctor. But only one. Your Doctor Arakawa's vaccine was placed on a transport that is now high enough in the atmosphere to avoid any attacks by the emerging enemy. It is due to reach the East Coast at a time I cannot discuss, except that it will be sooner than you might think. In case of unforeseen trouble, its precious cargo will be placed on a jet fighter with a secure area designed to protect fragile goods."

Kurama was glad to hear of the high-atmosphere flight. Even if Diclonius sensed it, their ability to stop the flight would be next to non-existent.

"Thank you, Colonel. So what of the bad news?"

The Colonel actually gestured for them to enter a secure room for the next part.

"The Gateway Arch in Saint Louis, Missouri is down. They broke it right in the middle, and rained the debris over the Quad States area. The levees surrounding the city of New Orleans have been destroyed outright. The city may not recover from this. They tried to take out Hoover Dam, but after Three Gorges, it was too well protected. The Space Needle in Seattle took heavy damage, and so did Independence Hall in Philadelphia-the Bell was shredded by their power. So far, we have been mostly lucky. No bridges, no tunnels-not yet, but the President and the Joint Chiefs consider those inevitable targets."

Kurama felt the ominous undertone beneath even these mixed tidings.

"You say that you have been mostly lucky."

The Colonel shook his head.

"It's become just like a war zone back home. You know how you don't salute an officer near to an enemy position? Marks them off to snipers. Well, the President summoned all of his surviving predecessors-for advice-they often turn to each other that way. The motorcades carrying the two eldest surviving Presidents were of course heavily protected - and all that did was mark them off to the Diclonius. When I was a kid, I used to laugh when Chevy Chase and Dan Aykroyd would imitate them on _Saturday Night Live - _none of it seems so funny now. But that's hardly the worst of it. This part, even above the other things, must remain top secret." Kurama did not stop and point out that, in a world of net access and twenty-four hour Cable News, such a premise might even be foolish. "I will keep to all my oaths, Colonel." The man seemed grateful, perhaps even acknowledging Kurama's unspoken criticism. "Thank You, Doctor. But this one is big, and needs at least twelve hours before it gets out there. You see, an official US plane that left after the vaccine transport moved out over the Sea of Japan - it even skirted what used to be North Korean airspace. While the Kims may be history, those shores must have a Diclonius presence. The plane in question was struck by hurled debris, spun back in and finally crashed back at its takeoff site. There were no survivors." Kurama rightly sensed the worst. "Who was onboard that plane, Colonel?" If Kurama had any remaining uncertainty that the Americans would take the Diclonius threat seriously, the Colonel's next words would have erased this doubt. "Several people. Chief among them was the Vice President of The United States." 


End file.
